Alexander Ovechkin

A hero to me is someone who leads by example, someone who steps up to do something when every one else backs down. They don’t give up on anything and make they proper decisions. For anything they do in life they work hard and succeed. Alexander Ovechkin is a hero. He is one of the youngest guys on the Washington Capitals hockey team but works the hardest and plays the biggest. He succeeds in anything he tries to do, and anything the coach wants him to do. That’s what a hero means to me.

Alexander Ovechkin is a hard working, fast and smart playing hockey player. He plays for the Russian world juniors in the Olympics, and plays for the Washington Capitals in the National Hockey League. His mother, Tatiana, won two Olympic gold medals while competing for the Soviet basketball team in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and in 1980 in Moscow.

The first signs of the Ovechkin's future came when he was a child. At the age of two, in an old toy store, Alexander grabbed a toy stick and helmet and wouldn’t let it go. As a small child, whenever he saw a hockey game on TV, he threw all his toys on the ground and ran to the TV. His parents say when Alexander was a small child they lived in an apartment building. Whenever his parents took the elevator up to their room Alexander always chose to take 25 flights of stairs, that was another sign of him being an athlete. He began playing hockey at the age of 7.

He stopped playing hockey for a while because his parents could not take him to the rink. But one of his coaches saw Alexander’s talent and told his parents that he should continue to play hockey. Ovechkin's brother, Sergei, who later died in a car accident, saw that Alexander loved hockey and insisted that he be allowed to return to the game. Ovechkin started playing again a few months later and never looked back on what happened. Because Alexander studied at the military institute for being a border guard he fortunately did not have to serve in the Russian military. Every single time Ovechkin scores a goal he kisses his glove and raises it up for his brother Sergei and his loving mother Tatiana. Last Friday night at General Motor’s stadium in Vancouver, October 27th, the Canucks played The Washington Capitals and ended in a shoot out. Ovechkin hit the cross bar in the shoot out, for the game winner. Brendan Morrison took the next shot and scored to finish off the game. Final score was 3-2 for Vancouver. “My goal was sketchy and just trickled in the net, but we won and that’s the main part”, said a relieved Morrison in an after-game interview. “ I tried my hardest to put it in the net but what can you do when you're that close, I guess luck was not on my side at the end of the game," said Ovechkin. Alex scored a beautiful goal on Roberto Luongo. Ovechkin may be a hero himself but he also has a hero of his own, Owen Nolan, captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And that’s what a hero means to me.