I’m not reporting here, to be clear. Asking questions. Away we go …
The National Hockey League is based in the United States, right?
This means NHL beat reporters can ask players any question they like, correct? Within the bounds of common sense, of course.
Let’s say a prominent Russian player displays a picture of himself arm-in-arm with Vladimir Putin on his Instagram profile page — and has for years. Let’s say he started an organization called “Team Putin” with expressly political intentions. Let’s say he’s the most accomplished Russian to ever play in the NHL, which means he benefits from a free-market economy within a society that (rightly) regards his Putin support as a form of free speech.
Wouldn’t it be fair to ask this player about the death of Alekei Navalny?
How about Yevgeny Prigozhin? Anna Politkovskaya? Sergei Yushenkov? Aleksandr Litvinenko?
Or what about the cold-blooded execution of a Russian defector in Spain, Maksim Kuzminov, Russia’s intelligence chief having labeled him “a moral corpse”? Or the blogger just killed for reporting on Russian casualties in Ukraine?
OR the murders of … ? This is where we run out of death space, as if a crowded old cemetery on the Jackie Robinson Parkway.
As if the psycho killer’s résumé had gone on so long we had to say, HEY, Vlad baby, maybe we should limit this thing to 50 pages? Employers like their psychotic résumés short and sweet.
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Because U.S.-based reporters enjoy the benefits of free speech as well as press freedom, don’t they? Doesn’t “courage to do your job” come with that? Wouldn’t responses about any of these killings from Putin loyalists who benefit from the NHL’s platform make for good news copy, at the very least?
What’s going on here?
This is what’s going on: The NHL is sportswashing. A reporter pressed Alex Ovechkin about his ties to Putin in 2014. He was immediately banned by the Washington Capitals from coming back to the place where the Caps slap puck. He's teaching math now, in Maryland.
His name is Slava Malamud. According to the only half-decent article available on the topic, by a Canadian outlet, Malamud covered the Caps “until he called out Ovechkin for his support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in March 2014.”
"The Capitals shut me down completely,” Malamud told CBC News. “They sent me a letter saying things like criticizing Ovechkin was out of bounds … and that I'm unprofessional, and I would no longer be welcome in the arena.”
That was ten years ago. Ovechkin hasn’t budged on the IG photo, meanwhile, nor has he addressed Russia’s military exploits since 2022.
SO. There’s free speech on the one hand and representing yourself as buddy-buddy with a murderer on the other. What if Lebron James’ Instagram profile page were him and a psycho killer? Wouldn’t reporters ask why?
“Hey, um, Lebron. Hate to ask, but what’s up with you and Ted Bundy on the Instagram?”
“And how about you and Charles Manson WHAT GIVES?”
No comment on how Bundy got taller than Lebron. Let’s call it the glory of fake art.
Importantly, Alex Ovechkin is no back-bencher. He’s poised to become the top NHL scorer of all time. He’s on a short list of best-ever to skate around chasing hard rubber. My point is this: We can’t ask him about all this? Reporters in the USA don’t want to? HUH?
Where did they go to journalism school, Pyongyang?
Were I still a reporter, this is the part where I’d say we contacted NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman for a comment about whether he’s a Putin lap-dog. He would have refused to answer. That’s what chumps in power do. The more they’re in doubt, the more they’re full of fear … the less they answer.
Unless the so-called reporter is Tucker Carlson. Speaking of lag-dogs and court jesters. But no time for him now. Been there done it.
Bigger picture, couldn’t economic sanctions against Russia include language that applies to work visas in this country? Why not? If sanctions are drafted to actually work, one would think the wealthiest and most symbolic Putin apologists need to feel that pain. Right?
There are currently 57 Russian players in the NHL, comprising 5 percent of the league. If they support Putin, make them hurt. They still pay Russian taxes, also. This means buying NHL tickets (and merchandise) (and $20 beers) actually funds Putin. D.C.-area folk hero or not, inconvenient to hear or not, aren’t these concerns more important than entertainment?
One former player, Dominik Hasek, an NHL Hall of Fame goalkeeper, has called Ovechkin “chickenshit” and says the NHL should suspend its Russian contingent. Others have noted that the idea that Russians need to protect their families back home is nonsense, that Putin doesn’t target family members of dissidents or skeptics … BECAUSE HE EXECUTES DISSIDENTS DIRECTLY.
I would say the same about a Caps ownership that protects its asset no matter what, because they’d rather sell tickets and keep politics out of hockey. They’re chickenshit.
Did Putin keep politics out of basketball when he threw Brittney Griner in the clink? Didn’t the Soviet Union invent sportswashing in the first place? And (anyway) if a mass-shooting occurred during a game, any game, would it not be the sports reporter’s obligation to cover that event? And aren’t we pissing on 1980 Olympic glory along the way? I thought the American hockey complex stood up to the Soviet Union … I mean Russia … NOPE.
Luckily, I’m no longer a reporter. I just make fake pictures now. I cut off my articles at the knees when they’ve lasted … oh, about this long. Made my points. Eagerly awaiting some nerve gas in response.
Today’s image-blast (meanwhile) features Ovechkin holding hands with Putin, among other visuals. Can you identify the Chekhov stories invoked?
Me neither. Enjoy.
Fuck those guys.
— Colin Sullivan
Next week: The artist formerly known as KGB reveals his next target …
Technical note: Our illustrator is confined by increasingly comic community standards. Our attempts to render “Vladimir Putin, psycho killer” mostly failed. We tried everything to create the infamous bathroom scene. No dice. Even Putin standing in a 1950s-era motel bathroom while holding a banana aloft was rejected (the idea being we might tinker with that banana until it resembled a knife). Was it the banana that tripped the censorship? Do community standards hate potassium? Hmmm.
Xoxo.
I'm a die-hard hockey fan and feel the League, as well as the press corps, have been a huge disappointment on anything that touches social issues. The League is to be expected; Bettman likes the NHL to be as large and lucrative as possible but not so big that it triggers any real scrutiny or accountability. This is the League that took away a draft pick from the Phoenix Coyotes for chicanery around scouting youth players, but asked nothing of the Chicago Blackhawks who covered up that they had a **sexual predator** on staff because it would be distracting during the team's championship run.
The hockey press, equipped only to ask sports questions, handle such incidents not with aggressive questioning, or reporting on the institutional breakdowns that lead to them, but brief displays of limp outrage followed by scurrying back to Xs and Os. My point is that this is the institutional culture of the sport, and it comes from the top down as well as the bottom up. Not only is there is no one to ask Ovechkin the legitimate question you propose - and that yes, as one of the NHL's most prominent figures he is fair game for - there is not even a place in the hockey discourse to debate the topic. That reflects the demand for it. Zero.
Dude why did you have to go and get all political on us???
Just kidding this was awesome.