2026 Olympics: “I would have seen Ivan Demidov play with Alex Ovechkin.”

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2026 Olympics: “I would have seen Ivan Demidov play with Alex Ovechkin.”
Credit: Everything is going Ivan Demidov's way these days.

Ivan Demidov is having a great rookie season in the NHL. The young Russian leads all first-year players in the league in points this season, and we can see how much talent he has brought to the habs lineup.

It's no coincidence that the club is scoring so many goals this year, you know.

That said, Demidov won't be able to take part in the current Olympic Games since Russia has been banned from the Games. So we won't be able to see thekid in action over the next few weeks… but we can still talk about the role he could have played.

According to Igor Larionov, who was asked about this byThe Athletic, Demidov's place would have been easy to determine: he would have sent him to play on the same line as Alex Ovechkin.

He would have liked to see the combination of experience, speed, talent, and hockey IQ between those two guys.

And in fact, we agree that it makes sense: we know how good Demidov is at creating offense, and the idea of seeing him set up a goal scorer of Ovechkin's caliber would have been something else.

And I have a feeling that the Capitals star would have loved playing with such a good passer… even though Demidov was more of a fan of Evgeni Malkin (who could have been at center on that line, by the way) than Ovechkin growing up.

It should be noted that in a poll conducted byThe Athletic, nearly 88% of NHL players surveyed said that Russia would have finished on the podium at the Olympics. Thevast majority (58.5%) placed them in third place, but there were those who thought they would have won silver or even gold.

We know that the club has a ton of talent in front of the net and offensive punch to spare: it could have been explosive. And seeing Demidov on Ovechkin's line would have been special.


Overtime

– Pavel Zacha will not be at the Olympics due to injury.

– Great read.

– What do you think?

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