On Golden Ponds: Lights, Camera, Action!

Warning: This Olympic hockey column is pretty much a episode of "Glee" with all the singing and dancing and acting and product placement going on.

As the NHL season plods along before the Sochi Games, we're looking for something, anything to bring us some joy in a world full of suspensions, concussions, firings, hirings and Philadelphia implosions (Warning: strong language).

With that in mind, I present you with three Battle of the Blades-esque pieces of video that should brighten your day.

First up are two commercials -- one featuring Los Angeles Kings winger (and possible Team USA captain) Dustin Brown, and the other featuring Washington Capitals captain (and the face of the Sochi Olympics) Alex Ovechkin.  It's not often hockey players are the stars of national commercials, so it's probably appropriate to make note when it happens.

The theme of both commercials is #FOMOH, which is a pretty terrible tag line, but we'll ignore that for now (to begin with, it stands for Fear Of Missing Out On Hockey, which means it really should be #FOMOOH, but aaaannnnyway...).

Here's Brown's version, with him standing in the middle of a city street in full Kings gear:

And here's the version with Ovechkin and Capitals teammate Brooks Laich, thanks to our friends at Russian Machine Never Breaks. Ovi's acting skills really shine through in this one.


He's as creepy as you'd imagine when he pulls back that hospital curtain, eh?

But wait, we're not done with Ovi just yet. He's also featured in a bizarre Russian music video that trumps all previous bizarre Russian music videos.

It's a promotion of sorts for the Winter Olympics, based on Russian pop star Irina Allegrova's hockey-related tune called "Shaybu, Shaybu," which is a phrase that equates to "Get the puck!"

The music video includes numerous other Russian hockey stars of past and present, including Penguins center Evgeni Malkin, former Devils winger Ilya Kovalchuk, former Canucks and Rangers star Pavel Bure and old-school goaltending great Vladislav Tretiak. I believe I also saw former Islander Alexei Yashin on screen, but can't be entirely sure because there was no turtleneck. Does he ever leave the house without a turtleneck? Hard to say...

In any case, it's quite the video. Get your popcorn ready and then click here to enjoy some Russian goodness.

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