For Andre Burakovsky, body art is all about intention. His number of tattoos may be small for now, but that’s because significance is the key to selecting what permanent marks go on his body.
“Every tattoo I do, I want it to be meaningful,” Burakovsky said. ”I want everything to reflect on something that I've been a part of or something that I fight for, believe in. I want everything on me to stand for something."
But just because the meaning behind tattoos for the Kraken winger is serious doesn’t mean the process has to be.
It was early June in 2018 when Burakovsky was part of the team that brought the Stanley Cup to the Washington Capitals for the first time. The players rightly decided to celebrate. After jumping into fountains in Georgetown and enjoying a sunny day in DC, a small group of guys decided they were going to get tattoos.
Capitals goaltender, Braden Holtby had a connection to a tattoo artist in the DC neighborhood of Adams Morgan. He made a call and Burakovsky, Holtby and four other Caps players headed over to Tattoo Paradise.
“Braden Holtby had a guy that he knew,” Burakovsky said. “So, we all went in there. We had a good day and we wanted to get it done.
“Everyone did different stuff. TJ Oshie did one of the Mario Kart characters. Jakob Vrana did a picture of the Stanley Cup, everyone got different ones.”
For Burakovsky, the choice was to build a good size block of text on his left forearm all in that one session.
At the top, in script is the date and the event of the Capitals winning the Cup. To round out the size of the art the winger wanted, he added the birthdates of his mother, Pernilla, father Robert and sisters Alexandra and Anna.”
“I wanted something bigger, something that would cover most of the forearm,” Burakovksy said. “My thought behind it was that I wanted to have something with my family.”
