- Matvei Michkov showed up to a jersey swap with Alex Ovechkin with nothing to hand over
- A team manager blocked the trade after Michkov had already arranged it by text
- Read below for the full story and why NHL jersey swaps keep getting stopped
Matvei Michkov arranged a jersey swap with Alex Ovechkin and then showed up empty-handed.
The Flyers forward told the whole story on the Russian series “Vacation,” a VideoSports show co-hosted by former Capitals forward Andrei Nikolishin, and he did not spare himself. “I was standing there without a jersey, looking like an idiot,” Michkov said, as translated from the interview.
He was walking through the signed sweaters he has collected so far in his NHL career when he got to the one with Ovechkin’s name on it.
“And this one is from Sasha Ovechkin. We had a head-to-head game, too. But it turned out the team manager wouldn’t give me my jersey, he forbade the swap. I told him, ‘We’d already agreed on it.’ I had messaged him before the game asking, ‘Can we swap jerseys?’ And Sasha said, ‘Sure, no problem,’ and he’d sign it.”
Here’s the full interview:
Ovechkin handed his over anyway and told Michkov to mail his later. Michkov did. It just took a while to land.
The two crossed paths again at this summer’s Match of the Year in Russia, and Ovechkin let him hear about it. “No way, the jersey never arrived. What the hell, man?” is how Michkov recalled the greeting.
Watch Michkov tell it:
Michkov did not invent this problem. Ovechkin has bumped into it plenty since he started trading sweaters with opponents, because several clubs hold exclusive game-used memorabilia deals that claim the jersey before a player can give it away.
Ovechkin explained the holdup to NHL.com in the spring:
“Some of them are not because I think some players have a deal with the team and they have to give it away to the fans, most of them are game worn.”
Washington had roughly 50 extra Ovechkin jerseys made this past season to keep the trades flowing. Most of the exchanges happen quietly in a hallway once the media clears out, though a few surfaced publicly, like the one with Anze Kopitar in November.
Check out that one:
Nearly all of it is bound for the memorabilia museum Ovechkin is building in Moscow, the same place Cole Hutson’s gear ended up. Michkov’s sweater will sit in there somewhere, filed next to a story Ovechkin still gets to tell at his expense.
