Ovechkin takes shift at grocery store, surprises kids with new cereal

WASHINGTON -- Ringing up groceries apparently comes almost as easily to Alex Ovechkin as scoring goals.

The Washington Capitals left wing showed off his checkout and serving skills during a visit to the Giant Food store in the Cathedral Heights section of Washington on Tuesday to promote the release of his limited-edition cereal, “Ovi’s Great Crunch.”

A bran flake cereal, “Ovi’s Great Crunch,” hit the shelves at all 163 Giant Food locations in the Washington area on Friday as part of the celebration of Ovechkin becoming the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer last season.

“It’s a fun time right now,” Ovechkin said. “We do a good thing and to spend time with our fans is one of the most important things for us right now.”

Ovechkin, who scored his 895th goal on April 6 against the New York Islanders to surpass Wayne Gretzky for the most in NHL history, started his afternoon shift at the Giant by getting behind an in-store cereal bar to help serve children from the Fort Dupont Ice Arena. After the children picked from toppings such as bananas, strawberries, blueberries, chocolate chips, honey and cinnamon, Ovechkin filled their bowls with the milk of their choosing.

Ea Hansford, a 7-year-old from the Fort Dupont Ice Arena who went with “only milk” on his cereal, said it, “tasted like winning.” Ovechkin got a bowl of his own and sat down with the children to enjoy the cereal, sign some autographs and pose for a few photos. Rather than choose one or two of the toppings for his cereal, Ovechkin said, “I have everything.”

“The most important thing is my kids love it,” Ovechkin said, referring to sons Sergei, 7, and Ilya, 5. “They love it, so it’s nice.”

After the cereal break, Ovechkin surprised shoppers by pushing a custom-made Capitals shopping cart loaded with “Ovechkin’s Great Crunch” around store while handing out boxes and Giant gift cards. He then assisted in ringing up customers and bagging their groceries.

“His serving skills were good,” Jonathan Arons, community relations manager for Giant Food, said. “He started slow and he did a great job picking it up towards the end. … His checkout skills were similar. Once he figured out where the barcode was, there was not stopping him.”

Word of Ovechkin’s appearance apparently spread quickly, and more fans showed up at the store as the afternoon progressed hoping to get a glimpse of him and possibly an autograph. Ovechkin, who turned 40 on Sept. 17, will begin his 21st NHL season when Washington hosts the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena on Oct. 8 (7:30 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, TNT).

The Capitals captain has been nursing a minor lower-body injury that has kept him out of practice since he left a few minutes into his first training camp practice on Thursday. He skated on his own before practice Tuesday, though, and said he expects to skate with the team Wednesday.

Before that, he stopped into Giant to lend a hand and spread the word about “Ovi’s Great Crunch.”

“It is incredible chance when you have the greatest local hockey star, the premiere (athlete) of Washington, DC, come to a grocery store like Giant,” Arons said. “It means the world. Every customer, all the kids, all the fans, all the associates had just like the most amazing time seeing Alex run around the store and do what we do every day.”

Ovechkin completed his visit by joining some kids shooting at a net outside the store’s front entrance and passing along some pointers.

“It’s great,” Ovechkin said. “I’m sure people enjoy it, people love it, and we enjoy it, too.”

This is the second time Ovechkin has teamed with Giant Foods on a limited-edition cereal. “Ovi O’s”, a honey-nut cereal, sold out within days of its release in September 2019. A portion of the proceeds from “Ovi’s Great Crunch” will benefit THE GR8 CHASE for Victory Over Cancer, a campaign supporting pediatric cancer research that Ovechkin launched in March along with the Capitals, Hockey Fights Cancer and The V Foundation for Cancer Research.

“The secret is Ovi loves cereal,” Arons said. “We did something special a few years ago with ‘Ovi O’s’, but when he broke Wayne Gretzky’s record, we said, ‘How do we do something truly special to celebrate this?’ And it was cereal. The cereal to me tastes great. It’s a bran flake, so it’s just a regular kind of crunchy, flakey cereal, but what’s fun is that you can add whatever you want to it. So, the kids got to put blueberries, chocolate chips, honey, cinnamon, all different types of things to really amp it up.”