Ovechkin's endless acceptance speech



We've all watched the award shows where someone's acceptance speech goes long, and the music and the announcer voice come up, and the speaker attempts to drone on over the music for a second or two, and then maybe they shout out a last few thanks reallyreallreally quickly in an increasingly high-pitched voice and then they kind of awkwardly walk off the stage while smiling and maybe joking with one of the presenters, who isn't paying attention and is instead imagining the open bar at the after-party.

Well, the routine is a bit different when the speaker is a 233-pound left wing with a habit of smashing the enemy. So in this case -- Alex Ovechkin winning the Ted Lindsay Award, the MVP as voted by the NHL's players -- the sequence went like this.

1) Ovechkin is cut off by the music and the announcer.

2) Ovechkin raises his arms and attempts to figure out where his sound went, appearing to mouth "I'm not done."



3) Comedian Reese Waters comes out to a different mic and gets ready to do whatever it is that comedians do at NHL award shows.

4) Ovechkin attempts to continue giving thanks on an emptying stage, into a dead mic, while Waters looks backward, trying to figure out if this is some gimmick that got left out of his script.

5) Everyone else walks off the stage.

6) Since it's clear that he won't move, and no one wants to make him, Ovechkin's mic suddenly comes alive again, and he just calmly goes back into his speech, without hurrying or apologizing or even acknowledging that he just totally smashed protocol with a forearm shiver to the nose.