Thanks once again to Tuvanhillbilly for unearthing another inexplicable video starring Alex Ovechkin. Last week it was an Ovechkin appearance plugging his search for a wife, and now we have evidence of his participation in some bizarre Russian game show:



Thanks to Puck Daddy for the pointer.

Like my friend, J.P., I was more than a little dumbstruck after watching the following clip from Russian television promoting a contest where women can call Caps winger Alex Ovechkin in hopes of getting married:

I really want to write some more, but I'm not sure where to start. I'll just keep my comments to noting that we shouldn't be surprised if average Russians have a distorted view of life in the USA.

One rumor we keep hearing in and around the Washington Capitals this offseason concerns the disposition of veteran centerman Michael Nylander. With the team almost $2.7 million over the cap after re-signing a passel of players and a logjam up the middle, it's hard for the folks who watch the team not to speculate as to what General Manager George McPhee might have up his sleeve to get under the cap by opening night.

Toss in the fact that Nylander's former agent, Mike Gillis, is now General Manager in Vancouver, and you have a pretty typical recipe for intrigue.

And here's something new for the mix: Our FanHouse colleague Jon "J.P." Press, with an assist from some of his readers, discovered that Nylander put his Potomac, Md. house on the market back on July 17. The discovery is just more fuel for the fire, as former goalie Olie Kolzig's departure from Washington was also presaged by a real estate listing for his home.

When you take a look at the numbers, it's clear that moving Nylander, who was imported from the New York Rangers as a free agent before the start of last season, would solve the team's cap problem in one fell swoop. Coming in at a cap hit of $4.875 million, trading the veteran center would take care of the overage and provide about $2 million in cushion going into the season -- just the sort of cushion that most GMs would like to have come the trade deadline.

But will the Caps need to move Nylander at all? The answer: It depends.

When I first read the news that Hockey Night in Canada had decided to add Mike Milbury to its on-air lineup, I have to admit that the announcement gave me a bit of pause. As I outlined this past season at The Sporting News, I wasn't exactly a fan of Milbury's work at NBC, and the thought of him joining the sport's flagship program on the CBC didn't exactly strike me as a gamebreaker.

Then again, after thinking about it a little more, I'm going to reserve judgment, and wait to see just how Milbury performs as a "regular contributor" on the broadcast's Satellite Hotstove segment. For those who aren't familiar with it, click here for a closer look.

So, why bother giving Milbury a chance after bashing him so hard? In this case, I think that Milbury was more or less a prisoner of an NBC broadcast that had to cater to the casual hockey fan, a fact of life that I think contributed directly to what I called an "embarrassing" interview with Washington Capitals winger, and soon to be league MVP, Alexander Ovechkin. Now that he's more or less freed from that role, I think we can expect to see more of the Milbury that appeared pretty regularly last year on TSN and NESN -- brash for sure, but insightful.

It's hard to add anything more than what Dan Steinberg has already said about this video clip featuring Alex Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexei Morozov presenting some sort of Russian pop music award to former Bee Gee Robin Gibb. I guess all I'll say at this point is it's good to see Ovechkin and his buddies enjoying the offseason.

About the only way the 2007-08 NHL season could have ended better for Washington Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin would have been with the Stanley Cup. But with that goal temporarily out of reach, Ovechkin seemed more than pleased to add the Hart and Lester Pearson Trophies to a collection that already included this year's version of the Art Ross and the Richard as well as the 2006 Calder as the league's Rookie of the Year.

But as much as the night belonged to Ovechkin -- the rest of the day in Washington, D.C. will belong to him too with plenty of public celebrations and a dinner-hour party and press event at one of the town's swankiest eateries -- there was plenty of other star power in the audience last night in Toronto for the NHL Awards. One who admitted plenty of surprise at being in the room was Ovechkin's head coach, Bruce Boudreau, who took top honors as winner of the Jack Adams as coach of the year. As it would turn out, the Caps would miss a clean sweep for their nominees when Chicago's Patrick Kane edged out Nicklas Backstrom for the Calder.

Just when I thought the season was over, they keep pulling me back in!

Ok, enough of channeling Al Pacino in a movie all serious fans of cinema would like to forget. The NHL is back, if only for a night, with its annual awards presentation. From what we've heard so far, it's looking like a huge night for Alex Ovechkin, who is fully expected to walk away with both the Hart and Pearson Trophies.

Still curious? Well, be sure to tune in to Versus/CBC tonight at 7:00 p.m. U.S. EDT. In the meantime, we convened a short FanHouse roundtable to discuss the big four awards: The Hart, the Norris, the Vezina and the Calder.

I think most of the hockey world had already anticipated that after leading the NHL this year in both goals and points, that Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals was the presumptive winner of the Hart Tropy as the league's Most Valuable Player. And I write that with all due respect to fellow nominees Evgeni Malkin and Jarome Iginla.

But that doesn't mean that folks don't like to be kept in suspense. Unless of course, you work for NHL.com. Over the past few weeks they've been accidentally putting merchandise on sale before things more or less get official when it comes to actually winning stuff.

First it was declaring the Penguins Eastern Conference Champs a couple of days before they actually eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers. Then it was seeing 2008 Stanley Cup Champs gear in Red Wings colors only a couple of hours before Pittsburgh's riveting victory in Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals. As my friend Sean Leahy has written before, the hockey gods normally frown on such blasphemy.

Which of course means they've gone and done it again. The NHL Awards Show isn't until June 12, but as far as Shop.NHL.com is concerned, you might as well already load up on your Alexander Ovechkin 2008 Hart Trophy T-Shirts. Click here to buy. I'm told by reliable sources that they're already accepting orders.

One last thing: Congratulations Alex! Be sure to act surprised next week in Toronto. As for Malkin and Iginla, I think they could be forgiven if they skipped the show knowing that they're not going to win.

Major stick tap: Japers' Rink.

UPDATE: The NHL has issued an official statement that Puck Daddy got hold of:

In an effort to offer our fans the merchandise they want in a timely manner following an event such as the NHL Awards, our licensees prepare product for all possible outcomes. In this situation, the link for one of the possible products became live early through an error by our e-commerce provider. We regret the error and have since taken steps to amend.

Hmmm. We'll see now, won't we?

Once again, FanHouse has gotten passed an English translation of an interview that's appeared in the pages of Sovetsky Sport. Today, we're able to share a translation of an interview conducted by the folks at Sovetsky with Atlanta Thrashers winger Ilya Kovalchuk. He's in Quebec City with the Russian National Team competing in the IIHF World Championships. Thanks once again to Sovetsky's Washington correspondent, Dmitriy Chesnokov, for giving us a hand translating an article by Sovetsky's Pavel Lysenkov.

Only Ilya Kovalchuk came to the mixed-zone after Russia's game against Switzerland. Even the event organizers were stunned at such "variety" of players. It got better when Sushinsky and Nabokov showed up. But until then Kovalchuk, like a media-relations rep, was speaking for everyone. But mostly for himself.

On the 18th minute of the game it looked like you scored your first goal of the tournament. But the goal was given to Ovechkin.

"Without a doubt, Sasha [Ovechkin] redirected my shot with his stick. He needs goals more than I do. We'll do our best to make Ovechkin the best scorer of the tournament," – Kovalchuk joked.

Once again, FanHouse has gotten passed an English translation of an interview that's appeared in the pages of Sovetsky Sport. Today, we're able to share a translation of an interview conducted by the folks at Sovetsky with Sergei Fedorov, late of the Washington Capitals. Fedorov is in Quebec City with the Russian National Team competing in the IIHF World Championships. Thanks once again to Sovetsky's Washington correspondent, Dmitriy Chesnokov, for giving us a hand.

Sergei Fedorov scored the game winner against Switzerland (5:3). After the game he met with Pavel Lysenkov at Hotel Concorde, right after dinner.

To be honest, the plans were to do a long interview with questions about the distant Soviet past [the last time Sergei played at the Worlds was when the Soviet Union still existed]. To debut for Team Russia at World Championships at 38 is a unique fact in itself. Just for that fact one can write odes to Sergei. But Fedorov did not want to talk about it:

"Oh, no, I will only talk about the game against Switzerland. If I start kicking up the past, my brain will start working backwards. And I need to look forward and not lose my concentration. Playoffs are close."