OPINION:
Alex Ovechkin celebrated his 40th birthday last month. Wednesday night, he will take the ice at Capital One Arena with the Washington Capitals to face the Boston Bruins for his 21st National Hockey League season. It will be the last year of his Capitals contract. It will be the ninth season since he won the Stanley Cup. It will be his third season with his eighth coach, Spencer Carbery. It will be a season where every goal he scores will be a new NHL record.
These are some of the things we know about Ovechkin — not everything, though.
What we don’t know is if this is Ovechkin’s last season.
The Capitals thought it was going to be his last season. Well, at least one ticket sales employee.
Two weeks after Washington was knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs last season by Carolina in five games in the second round, someone from the Capitals organization sent out an email selling tickets for the next season, promoting it as “Alex’s final NHL season.”
Quickly, the Capitals’ public relations department posted this statement on social media: “No decision has been made on Alex Ovechkin’s future following the 2025-26 NHL season. An email was sent from an individual with the corporate sales department that mistakenly alluded to next year being Alex Ovechkin’s final year.”
Since then, Ovechkin has kept his plans under wraps, with responses like “We’ll see what is going to happen.”
I think everyone believed that after he broke Wayne Gretzky’s hallowed all-time goal-scoring mark of 894 near the end of the regular season, finishing with 897 goals, Ovechkin would pay out this season and then call it a career after 21 years in the league.
Go home to Russia, play for a celebratory season in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and then drink beer and enjoy his family while leaving an unmatched goal-scoring legacy behind. That may have been the plan.
Did those plans change when Ovechkin wound up still skating at a high competitive level, scoring 44 goals while playing in 65 games — third in the league? He did this while breaking his leg and recovering during the season.
Did those plans change when the team that surrounded him — a team that was supposed to be rebuilding — wound up competing at a high level?
Washington’s team in transition posted a 51-22-9 record for 111 points, the best in the Metropolitan Division, then defeated Montreal in five games in the first round of the playoffs — the franchise’s first playoff series victory since winning the Stanley Cup. Carbery won the Jack Adams Award as the league’s coach of the year.
Did those plans change because Ovechkin is having too much fun to quit?
“I would bet dollars to donuts that the first goal he scores this year, the reaction is going to be just like it has been his entire career,” Carbery told reporters. “He loves the game, he loves to come to the rink, he loves to be around his teammates, he loves to go out and compete and try to win. He loves to score goals. So, I don’t think that will change one bit even though he’s passed Wayne and now has the all-time goal record.”
None of this means that it is not Ovechkin’s last season.
It is possible that after the attention focused on him during the quest to break Gretzky’s record last season, Ovechkin wasn’t up for a goodbye tour and the spotlight that would accompany it.
This still may very well be the last year we see Ovechkin skating for the Capitals. To believe otherwise is to believe that he will continue playing after he turns 41, a feat he certainly seems capable of. Many others have — 51 players have competed in the league past the age of 40, from the legendary Gordie Howe at the age of 52 to Jaromir Jagr at 45, Mark Messier at 43 and others.
There is no reason to believe, based on the level of play he turned in last season, that Ovechkin can’t still compete on the ice after this season. If he wants to, it is likely that Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, who committed to having Ovechkin play in Washington for his entire career, will do what he must for that to happen.
Whether this is Ovechkin’s last year or not, we should savor all of it. There should be no rush to say goodbye.
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