- Alex Ovechkin and 7-year-old son Sergei are on the same roster for Saturday’s Ovi Cup gala match
- Ilya Kovalchuk captains the other side, with Evgeni Malkin working the game from behind the bench
- Read below for both full lineups and what Sergei did in last year’s gala
Alex Ovechkin gets to line up with his oldest son again.
Washington’s captain and 7-year-old Sergei Ovechkin are on the same roster for Saturday’s Ovi Cup gala match at Arena Mytishchi outside Moscow, the exhibition that closes out Ovechkin’s annual youth tournament. The Moscow Region sports ministry released both lineups on Tuesday.
Ilya Kovalchuk runs the other bench.
Ovechkin’s group includes Dmitry Orlov, Slava Fetisov, Andrei Markov, Nikita Filatov, Slava Voynov and Roman Rotenberg, plus former Russia soccer star Andrei Arshavin. Kovalchuk gets Artemi Panarin, Alexei Morozov, Valeri Kamensky, Vasily Koshechkin, Maxim Afinogenov and Evgeny Artyukhin.
Evgeni Malkin drew coaching duty this time. He shares the bench with Alexei Kasatonov, Alexander Yakushev, Vladimir Myshkin, Daniil Markov and Viktor Shalimov. Ovechkin said in March that he would take an assistant job if Malkin ever landed a head coaching gig, so treat Saturday as a trial run.
The kid is the reason to tune in, though.
Sergei scored four goals in last August’s gala match, two of them on Igor Shesterkin, and outscored his dad in an 11-7 win over Pavel Datsyuk’s squad. Malkin had a hat trick in that one. Ovechkin managed a single goal.
Saturday will be his fourth gala appearance. He assisted on one of his dad’s goals in 2023 and skated a line with Ovechkin and Malkin in 2024.
His mother, Nastya Shubskaya, and grandmother, Tatyana Ovechkina, watched last year’s game from the stands:
Ovi Cup 2026 started August 1 and wraps Saturday, split between the Vladimir Petrov Arena in Krasnogorsk and the Viktor Shalimov Arena in Mytishchi. The gala match is the send-off on the final day.
This is Ovechkin’s second exhibition of the Russian summer. He was drafted to Team Sergachev for the Match of the Year charity game in Saint Petersburg last month.
Then the offseason victory lap ends. Ovechkin has already said he plans to play a 22nd NHL season in Washington, and camp is about a month out.
