Ovechkin Names Mario Lemieux His Favorite Hockey Player

Alex Ovechkin’s favorite hockey player of all time spent his entire career in a Penguins sweater.

The Capitals captain sat down with Andrey Arshavin and Nikita Filatov for FONBET’s YouTube show in Moscow, and somewhere inside an hour of hockey and soccer talk came a two-word question. Favorite hockey player?

“Mario Lemieux,” Ovechkin said.

Watch the full sit-down, with Dynamo Moscow striker Konstantin Tyukavin filling out the table:

Skipping every Russian on the board is the surprising part. Ovechkin came up through Dynamo Moscow’s hockey system, and for years his go-to answer was Owen Nolan, a leftover from a childhood spent pulling for the San Jose Sharks.

Lemieux is a defensible pick for anybody. He put up 1,723 points in 915 games, won two Stanley Cups as a player, took home three Hart Trophies, led the league in scoring six times and went into the Hall of Fame in 1997.

Ovechkin and Lemieux shared the ice exactly once, during Ovechkin’s rookie season in 2005-06. Lemieux later gave him a game-used stick from that night.

Their names crossed again on January 18, 2020, when Ovechkin’s second goal of a hat trick against the Islanders pulled him even with Lemieux at 690.

He passed him before the night was over, then went by Wayne Gretzky in April 2025. Ovechkin now sits at 929 career goals and 1,687 points in 1,573 games.

That choice carries a little weight given the last two decades. Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby were the league’s headline rivalry, and Lemieux sat on the Pittsburgh side of it the whole way.

Now 60, Lemieux bought the Penguins out of bankruptcy in 1999 and sold his majority stake to Fenway Sports Group in 2021, staying on since as a minority owner and team ambassador.

Crosby and Ovechkin made peace a long time ago, so the answer probably doesn’t sting in Washington the way it would have in 2009.