President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia congratulated the hockey participant Alex Ovechkin on Monday for breaking the N.H.L.’s goal-scoring document.
Mr. Ovechkin, 39, captain of the Washington Capitals, scored his 895th career goal on Sunday night in a recreation in opposition to the New York Islanders. That broke a document set by Wayne Gretzky that had stood for 26 years.
In an announcement on Monday, Mr. Putin praised Mr. Ovechkin, who began out as an expert hockey participant in Moscow, for the “momentous achievement” that he referred to as “a real trigger for celebration for followers in Russia and past.”
The sports activities feat — and the feedback from the Kremlin — have put a contemporary highlight on Mr. Ovechkin’s past support for Mr. Putin and on the hockey star’s stance on the struggle in Ukraine.
Mr. Ovechkin, who has performed for the Washington Capitals since 2005, has lived in america for the previous 20 years. However his Instagram profile picture reveals him with Mr. Putin, and in 2017, he began a social media movement called #PutinTeam, months earlier than Russia’s elections.
The hockey star additionally raised eyebrows in 2022 when he didn’t problem an outright condemnation of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When requested about it at a information convention, Mr. Ovechkin mentioned, “Please, no extra struggle.” In response to a query about whether or not he nonetheless supported Mr. Putin, Mr. Ovechkin mentioned, “He’s my president,” however added, “I’m not in politics. I’m an athlete.”
In his postgame remarks on Sunday, Mr. Ovechkin celebrated the achievement with a flurry of gratitude for his fellow gamers — and mentioned, “Russia, we did it!”
On Monday, Russian state tv celebrated the athlete as “our satisfaction, a Russian hockey participant who made historical past,” drawing “admiration on either side of the Atlantic.”
Professional-Putin pundits had been fast to grab on Mr. Ovechkin’s achievements after the record-setting objective.
“Ovechkin has confirmed many occasions he isn’t afraid and never ashamed of being Russian, even when Russians have been bullied for being Russian,” Sergei Markov, a political scientist with hyperlinks to the Kremlin, wrote on social media. “That is one other factor that everybody in Russia is grateful to Ovechkin for, in addition to the respect he has gained on the earth — not only for the hockey.”
Mr. Ovechkin has not competed for Russia internationally since 2019, and the Russian nationwide staff has been banned from international competitions by the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation because the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The struggle has been a contentious problem in worldwide sports activities, with Russian athletes coming beneath strain to sentence the struggle.
