The Washington Capitals had a famous fan in attendance for their game against the Florida Panthers on Monday.
Well-known DC sports supporter Mia Khalifa sat along the glass at Amerant Bank Arena rocking the team’s 2018 Stadium Series jersey.
“chirp chirp,” she wrote on Instagram along with the hashtag #heatedrivalry. The hashtag is a nod to the popular TV series in which two professional hockey players have a secret romance.
Khalifa also posted several videos to her Instagram Story, where she commented, “you’re gonna see a lot of no. 43 at the Olympics” and “glass>courtside.”
Khalifa, born in Beirut, Lebanon, moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland. In January 2018, she notably met Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin through Fanatics, calling it the “experience of a lifetime.”
“Met my hero tonight,” she wrote. “I have never felt like more of a child, but in the presence of someone like @aleksandrovechkinofficial, it’s hard not to be humbled. Thank you, Ovi, for being so patient with me when I was a nervous mess.”
Khalifa also gave Ovechkin a personal brand shirt inspired by the Capitals’ wordmark logo.
📸: Ovechkin commented on the experience years later while speaking to rapper Basta.
“She’s actually a hockey fan,” Ovechkin said via the Gazgolder YouTube channel in 2023, and as translated via Google Translate. “She watches Washington. She came by and took photos with all the players. She’s a real hockey fan.”
Throughout the years, Khalifa has shown off several different Capitals jerseys she owns, including an Andre Burakovsky sweater. She’s also been to countless Capitals games, even attending a few in the playoffs during the team’s Stanley Cup championship run.
Khalifa was even struck in the chest by a puck during an Eastern Conference Final game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“I was sitting behind the glass during a game, and it came shooting over the glass, and it caught me so off guard,” Khalifa told the UK’s Daily Star. “I got to take it home, it was the single greatest souvenir any hockey fan can get: a game-used puck that comes at you and hits you.”
Khalifa is currently the founder and creative director at Sheytan.World, a jewelry and bodywear company she started in 2023. In recent years, Khalifa has gotten involved in the fashion world, walking the runway at both London Fashion Week and Barcelona Fashion Week.
She is also well known for her advocacy for sex workers’ rights, support for LGBTQIA+ initiatives, and activism on behalf of Palestinian causes.
Khalifa, a self-titled “Twitter menace,” is active on social media and recently wrote a column for GQ on her top 10 movies of 2025.