Washington Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin and Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: The Guardian)
The National Hockey League (NHL) has a war crimes problem.
The NHL's official Instagram account regularly highlights Alexander Ovechkin, one of hockey's premier stars. Click on the NHL's stories and you can access Ovechkin's own account, where he regularly shares posts with his 1.6 million followers. At the top, smiling creepily at viewers from Ovechkin's profile photo is none other a wanted war criminal: Vladimir Putin.
By actively minimizing acts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the NHL is sport-washing mass atrocities. Instead of calling out Ovechkin's long-standing support for Putin, it celebrates his every goal and step towards Wayne Gretzky's all-time goal-scoring record.
When will enough be enough? With Putin now facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC), will the NHL and Ovechkin finally change their tune?
Not unlike other sporting bodies such as FIFA, the NHL is a laggard when it comes to basic human rights standards. It was slow on denouncing anti-Black racism following the murder of George Floyd, and it has been slow in celebrating gender diversity. On the latter, some its hockey teams appear to be following the Kremlin's instructions.
In late 2022, Russia expanded its anti-gay propaganda laws. Now, numerous NHL hockey teams, most recently the Chicago Blackhawks, have decided not to wear Pride-themed jerseys because of fears that Russian-born players will face unspecified "security threats". Instead of having everyone except the Russian players celebrate the LGBTQ community – and therefore making a point in support of sexual and gender minorities – numerous NHL teams decided that no one would wear the jerseys. Somewhere, Vladimir Putin is ecstatic about the reach of his homophobic policies.
Back to Ovechkin. A recent in-depth CBC investigation outlined how Ovechkin developed a very close relationship with Putin since at least 2014. Ovechkin endorsed Putin's first invasion of Ukraine that year, puppeting Kremlin claims that it was necessary to protect children from "fascism". While Russian authorities crushed domestic dissent and jailed thousands of democratic opponents of Putin, Ovechkin worked tirelessly to ensure the Russian leader was repeatedly re-elected.
Ask the NHL, though, and the answer is stonewalling and silence. When asked why Ovechkin had a picture of Putin up on his Instagram profile, Ovechkin's coach on the Washington Capitals, Peter Laviolette, stated: "I'm going to talk about hockey tonight." Hear that, victims of Putin's war crimes? Hockey is more important than you.
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