Devils’ Alexei Ponikarovsky will follow European Championships in native Ukraine – The Star-Ledger
Alexei Ponikarovsky’s native Ukraine is co-hosting the European Championships.
There was a time when Alexei Ponikarovsky was a soccer player. It was short-lived, cut off by the wrong combination of the sport’s popularity in his native Ukraine and his desire to play it.
He was six years old in 1986 when his father tried to sign him up to play in a practice facility in his hometown of Kyiv. It was the summer after Dynamo Kyiv had won the UEFA Cup Winners Cup — a prestigious tournament held amongst European club teams — and the sport’s popularity was at a high. The then six-year-old Ponikarovsky couldn’t get a spot in the facility and from there his focus changed.
“My Dad said ‘OK let’s try hockey’,” Ponikarovsky said. “I didn’t know anything about it. We just kind of switched.”
He added: “”Over the years I’ve developed into a hockey player, I guess.”
A small moment that has made a lot of difference, but the Devils’ winger is still a soccer fan and now may be no better time for him. Ukraine is co-hosting the European Champions, along with Poland. It is an international stage for the country and one Ponikarovsky is happy to see.
“I think it’s good for the country, for the image,” he said. “They put a lot of money in to renovate the arenas and the infrastructure.”
Ponikarovsky’s family still lives in Kyiv. His father is a big fan of the sport and trying to get tickets that are hard to come by due to the influx of tourists and incoming fans.
While Ponikarovsky won’t be going to the Euros (after the Stanley Cup finals he will go to see his kids for the first time in over two months), he will be following along — cheering for Ukraine, and Russia as well, though he will be outnumbered in the locker room when Ukraine opens up against Sweden Monday in Kyiv.
Though he took up hockey, Ponikarovsky never stopped playing soccer and still cares for the sport.
“I love soccer,” he said. “I always played soccer in the summertime. As a kid I played it every day, same as hockey. Especially in the summertime. In the wintertime, it was more hockey than soccer but summer every day, outside.”
Ponikarovsky followed Ukraine’s run in the 2006 World Cup, when they advanced to the quarter-finals. It has become the norm to root from afar. He left Kyiv at 15-years-old to go to Moscow in furtherance of his career and hasn’t been back to the country for more than a month-at-a-time since.
With losses to Austria and Turkey in friendlies in the run-up to the tournament, expectations are not high for Ukraine, but host countries have shown a tendency to outperform their limitations.
“Hopefully we can see some results,” Ponikarovsky said.
Mike Vorkunov: mvorkunov@starledger.com; twitter.com/Mike_Vorkunov