For your feel good story of the day, I present to you a tale of Alex Ovechkin doing a kind thing for a homeless man in our city. Yesterday afternoon, The Sequel Cafe tweeted out that they saw Ovie giving his coat and hat to a homeless man in downtown Edmonton. 

The story had already started making the rounds on Twitter but no one could really confirm it, despite the fact that this is the kind of good deed that we all want to believe. That’s when Ovechkin’s wife, Nastasiya Ovechkina, proved the story to be true with a screen-captured post of her text messages with Alex that she threw on Instagram ( a post she’s since removed).

Over at Russian Machine, Graham Dumas translated the texts:

I hope she didn’t pull the screen cap down because the Internet white knights get mad if you call a homeless guy a “bum” (we got some of that on Facebook for this story) because the point if this story is that Alex Ovechkin saw an opportunity to help someone and he did exactly that. That’s a good dude regardless of slang/potential translation issues. How many rich folk roll through town without doing anything? A lot, and that’s the point here.

It goes without saying that Edmonton can get freezing and this gesture is something that could keep that man alive through the hellscape we call winter. Having what I would guess is a very nice jacket will keep that man warmer than he would have been otherwise and that’s the story here. For a guy with a $100 million contract in his pocket, donating a hat and jacket to someone less fortunate may not be a big deal for his wallet but it is certainly huge for the recipient.

Alex Ovechkin, we speak your name.

From the Capitals Twitter Account: