Off go father and son to the players’ lounge - serious-faced dad speaking in Russian and precious son giggling as they hold hands. Around Nikita, Penguins players pass through and media gathers, but the boy is transfixed by that game until Malkin emerges with pizza. On this particular day, Nikita sits by himself on the bench connected to Malkin’s locker stall, his 6-year-old legs dangling while he plays a game on dad’s phone. For all the physical gifts he’s displayed since he first put on a pair of hockey skates, for any of those times he beat big brother Denis in tennis matches, for those early NHL seasons when he won individual awards and those later ones marked by the highs of more Stanley Cups and lows of declining performance resulting from injuries, and for a “rough last year” when his future, along with that of his own young family, hung in the balance - through all of it, Malkin, a sure-bet future Hall of Famer and destined to be remembered as one of the greatest Russian hockey players, has suffered from confidence crises.Īnd now he sees those same doubts in his son, Nikita, who is shy around unfamiliar faces, who is trying to learn two languages while bouncing between Pittsburgh, Miami and Moscow, and who recently switched from hockey to soccer, a game his dad feels uncertain of how to help teach. Part of him is always the younger brother in a competitive two-son family from a remote industrial city in Russia. There’s a reason Malkin thinks like this. He’s wired this way, to believe even without evidence that somebody somewhere is somehow doubting him. He presumes they’re asking them - and other questions - about him at all times, though. Malkin hasn’t actually heard any of those questions from any of those people.
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