WASHINGTON — At a glass podium in a nondescript room in Capital One Arena, Alex Ovechkin stood in front of the cameras early Sunday evening and didn’t give an inch.
Five days after announcing that this, his 21st NHL season, could be his last, and 25 minutes after what might have been his final home game — a 3-0 victory over Pittsburgh — Ovechkin answered another round of questions about his future by rejecting their premise.
He might retire. He also might not. With his team’s playoff hopes still alive after 81 games, the season isn’t over. He has decided nothing. There’s hockey to play. What’s left to say?
If he was ever going to crack and tip his hand regarding the situation, if the dam were ever to break, it would’ve happened at that podium, particularly when Ovechkin was asked how he will want his sons to remember his career, and what it’s been like to play in front of them as they’ve grown.
“I’ll remember this moment,” he said as 8-year-old Sergei and 6-year-old Ilya flanked him. “I’ll remember playoffs. Obviously, it’s a good thing we have lots of video cameras, cell phones. They’re gonna watch it when they’re growing up, and they’re gonna remember it and they’re gonna enjoy it.”
Then, he was gone.
The Capitals have one game left to play, in Columbus on Tuesday, potentially with a playoff berth on the line. That, Ovechkin said, is his focus. There will be time to reflect on what we all saw on Sunday night — 19,000 fans desperate to show a 40-year-old icon what he means to them and grateful for the opportunity to do just that. For Ovechkin, it’s firmly in the future, whether a week, a month or a year from now.
The Athletic spent six days around Ovechkin and the Capitals, chronicling what might be some of the final NHL days of the man who has scored more regular-season goals than any player in the history of the sport, navigating the intersection of his own uncertain future and his team’s waning, waxing attempts to keep their season alive.
Tuesday, April 7: ‘Ovi is singular’
Ovechkin, who in April 2025 broke Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 career NHL goals, maintained throughout the 2025-26 season — the last of the five-year, $47.5 million contract he signed in 2021 — that he’d made no decision on his next chapter.
Returning to the Capitals remained a workable option for legitimate on-ice reasons. In his twilight, as his hair silvered and the rest of his game slipped, Ovechkin became a sort of specialist. In the way NHL teams once carried players solely for their ability to throw punches, the Capitals tasked Ovechkin almost solely with scoring goals. To wit, on March 26 against the Utah Mammoth, after 73 games, coach Spencer Carbery gave Ovechkin his first defensive-zone start of the season. Forty-two seconds later, Ovechkin beat Vitek Vanecek for the 924th goal of his career.
Discussion about Ovechkin’s future has been in the air for years, not months, and it returned to the forefront when the Capitals’ 8-1 loss to the New York Rangers on April 5 dropped their playoff odds from 27 percent to 9 percent. That day, ESPN cameras captured Ovechkin, in street clothes, gazing at the empty Madison Square Garden ice, and the clock began to tick more loudly.
On this day, at an open practice at the team’s facility in Arlington, Va., Ovechkin helped owner Ted Leonsis, clad in dress shoes, make his way across the ice for the team picture, their 20th together. Washington’s rookies, including April 6 call-up Ilya Protas, were taking their first team photo.
Fifteen minutes later, as Washington did special-teams work on an adjacent rink, Ovechkin was elsewhere. He’d previously informed Leonsis and other key members of the franchise that he’d delay his decision about next season until the summer.
Capitals fan Charlie McManus, in a shirt featuring an old Instagram picture of a grinning Ovechkin cradling teammate Connor McMichael’s head, watched practice from the boards. He’d hoped to catch Ovechkin on the ice. He hoped more that the Capitals would find a way to push themselves more squarely into the playoff race, and that Ovechkin would delay the inevitable for at least another year.
“A lot of guys are great, but Ovi is singular,” McManus said. “He’s slowed down a lot, but that’s expected. He’s over 40 years old, for God’s sake. What he can contribute, he does.”
Wednesday, April 8: The announcement
For months, members of the Washington organization maintained — publicly and privately — that they didn’t know which way Ovechkin was leaning about the 2026-27 season, and that Ovechkin himself didn’t know, either.
At some point in early April, with home games dwindling — along with opportunities to suitably honor Ovechkin were he to decide on retirement — a balance was struck. Ovechkin would record a video interview with Capitals radio announcer John Walton and announce that he needed more time to decide. The team posted and publicized that video early on Wednesday, ahead of their morning skate at Scotiabank Arena, where they would face the Toronto Maple Leafs that night.
Ovechkin doesn’t regularly take morning skates. This time, as the Zamboni did laps around the arena, he sat on the bench next to linemate Dylan Strome, chewing green bubble gum and speaking minimally. When the Capitals hit the ice, Ovechkin visibly opened up, taking a few spins alongside Carbery — the type of casual, on-ice conversation that Carbery, now in his third season with Washington, said has helped him build a relationship with his captain.
“We’ve just grown together over the last three years,” Carbery said. “(I) just care deeply for him as a person, first and foremost. And then for what he’s done for this organization, and for me personally as a head coach here the last three years — of just putting everything he possibly could from 38 years old, 39, and now 40, into this team.”
Carbery called the uncertainty “no big deal.”
“Whether he’s back next year, he’ll be welcomed with open arms from my standpoint as the head coach and as our captain,” Carbery said. “And if this is it, we’ll support him that way, and I’ll celebrate him and give him a big hug and have a cold beer with him.”
“I’ve tried to keep it focused on being the head coach and helping our team prepare and win games, but I can’t help but, at times, just sit back and appreciate and soak it in a little bit.”
The questions Carbery faced that day weren’t new, but the context had shifted. Washington started the day with five points (and four teams) separating them from a playoff spot. Ovechkin’s non-decision had also become public, and in a subsequent three-minute, 10-question session with reporters, he didn’t offer much that wasn’t covered in the social-media interview.
“We’re still fighting for a playoff spot, so we’re gonna have to talk after the year,” he said.
Asked why he didn’t opt to announce his retirement ahead of the season, as outgoing Kings star Anze Kopitar did, his answer was simple: “I don’t know if it’s the end or not.”
What about, Ovechkin was asked, choosing the Wayne Gretzky method and announcing his retirement with a few days left on the schedule?
“Wayne is one person,” he said. “(Kopitar) is another person. If it’s happening, it’s happened. You guys’ll probably find out.”
Strome, Ovechkin’s center for four seasons, said he thought Ovechkin got his fill of the traveling-roadshow life during his pursuit of Gretzky last spring.
“It was really cool to be a part of — and I don’t think he wants to do that again, to be honest,” Strome said. “I’m not going to put words in his mouth, but he did say he doesn’t want the big send-off and things like that. But he deserves whatever he would want.”
Friday, April 10: ‘Babe Ruth’
After a 4-0 win in Toronto on Wednesday and an off day on Thursday, the Capitals began practice three points out of a playoff spot. The crowd at MedStar Ice Capitals IcePlex had grown since Tuesday. Brian Kiviat, a Capitals fan since their inaugural season in 1974, brought a poster reading “OVI, WANT THIS FOR YOUR MUSEUM?” Taped to it was Kiviak’s actual Virginia license plate: “NOTB SUK,” a reference to a remark Ovechkin made ahead of the team’s Stanley Cup-winning season in 2017-18.
Ovechkin has said that he intends to open a museum in Moscow next year to house his extensive collection of jerseys, sticks and other NHL memorabilia.
Brian Kiviat handed over his license plate to Alex Ovechkin. (Sean Gentille / The Athletic)
Being a hockey fan during the era of Ovechkin, Kiviat said, “is like living with Babe Ruth.” After practice, Capitals skills coach Kenny McCudden carried Kiviak’s sign (and contact information) into the players’ area.
Meanwhile, navigating uncertainty — around the team’s postseason hopes, around Ovechkin’s future and around the Saturday-Sunday home-and-home matchup with the Pittsburgh Penguins — was on Carbery’s mind.
“You’re so laser-focused on trying to make the playoffs and trying to win (Saturday). I found myself and I’m sure our players (did the same), going, ‘Oh jeez, this might be (Ovechkin’s) last four days,’” he said, adding that it was important for the coaching staff to “take a second to acknowledge and reflect the fact that you’re coaching one of the greatest players to ever play the game of hockey.”
There are two autographed sticks above Carbery’s desk that remind him of that: one signed by Ovechkin and one signed by Gretzky.
Other, younger members of the organization have Ovechkin memorabilia, too. Justin Sourdif, Washington’s 24-year-old rookie center, owns a red No. 8 jersey. His parents bought it for him when he was 7 years old, a kid in British Columbia who’d watched enough YouTube clips to pick a favorite player.
Young Justin Sourdif was a big fan of Alex Ovechkin. (Courtesy of Washington Capitals)
After Washington acquired Sourdif from the Florida Panthers in the offseason, new teammate Connor McMichael made the introduction. McMichael, like Sourdif, grew up a jersey-owning Ovechkin superfan.
“It was definitely nerve-racking meeting him for the first time, then slowly but surely you realize you’re teammates with him and he’s a completely normal guy,” Sourdif said. “Everybody just follows his lead out there.”
As Sourdif spoke in the Capitals’ locker room, Protas valiantly attempted to give an on-camera interview while Ovechkin remained in his sight line, laying belly-down on an equipment case, kicking his feet and batting his eyes at the 6-foot-6 Belarussian teenager. The day before, Protas had taken his first NHL shift between his brother, Aliaksei, and Ovechkin. It was tough to say which linemate he preferred.
“(Ovechkin) accomplished so, so much,” Sourdif said. “I think when he’s able to look back, whatever decision he makes, I don’t think he’ll have any regrets.”
Saturday, April 11: ‘Maybe it’s a dream’
A day without any NHL games on Friday meant no scoreboard watching for Carbery or his players. “The NHL hates Friday nights for some reason,” the coach said on Saturday. “We know where we’re at and what we need to do and the teams that are in this race with us.”
As he spoke, news broke that in Saturday’s game, the Penguins would rest Sidney Crosby — the other half of one of the league’s greatest individual rivalries — plus Evgeni Malkin, perhaps the second-greatest Russian player of all time; Erik Karlsson, possibly the best defenseman of his generation; and Kris Letang, a key part of the Penguins-Capitals rivalry for nearly two decades.
The decision, to a degree, took some air out of the matinee game. Fans in attendance, many of whom had driven up from the D.C. area, weren’t going to get the Crosby-Ovechkin matchup they’d anticipated. But of the 20 or so Capitals fans The Athletic spoke to at PPG Paints Arena, none of them cared about the Penguins’ light lineup.
Washington, indeed, beat the call-up-heavy Penguins 6-3, and Pittsburgh fans gave Ovechkin a minute-long ovation. Ovechkin also scored the 929th goal of his career, an empty-netter with 3:38 remaining that gave the Capitals their final goal.
Alex Ovechkin acknowledges the ovation from Pittsburgh fans. (Philip G. Pavely / Imagn Images)
Also, Ilya Protas scored his first NHL goal — but, again, he seemed more happy about his interactions with Ovechkin.
“It’s unreal to sit with him in the room, and you’re just looking around, and see Big Man. And you’re like, ‘Maybe it’s a dream and I’m still sleeping,’ but no. I’m really happy it’s reality,” Protas said.
“Even when I’m making a mistake and (Ovechkin is) not happy with me and telling me what I gotta do better, (I’m still) the most happiest guy,” Protas said, “because Alex Ovechkin told me how bad I am.”
Ovechkin, meanwhile, scooped the puck out of Pittsburgh’s net after Protas’ power-play goal for safe-keeping.
“I was just happy he was on the ice,” Protas said.
Sunday, April 12: The end?
By 11:30 a.m. ET, ahead of a 3 p.m. puck drop for Washington’ s regular-season home finale against Pittsburgh, fans had already begun gathering outside Capital One Arena. They were mixed in with museum-goers making their way across 7th Street to the National Portrait Gallery. “Forget this art stuff,” one man said in the crosswalk. “We want to see Ovechkin score.”
A half hour later, one lap around the arena’s Gallery Place entrance was enough to see fans wearing every feasible iteration of an Ovechkin Capitals jersey. The last one off the bingo card: the 2023 Stadium Series look, featuring an oversized rendition of the “Weagle” logo.
Inside, Carbery was again tasked with threading the needle between his team’s playoff hopes and the magnitude of the occasion. The hope, he said, was that the day would follow the beats of the last few games of the Gretzky chase. “The guys understand that. They know the gravity that comes with it,” Carbery said. “It gives you a little bit extra. ‘OK, I want to make sure that I’m doing everything I possibly can to make this a successful night for not only (Ovechkin), but for the team.’”
Explicitly mentioning Ovechkin — in, say, a pregame speech — was not part of the plan. “He would pull me aside probably after that meeting and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Carbery said.
As Carbery finished up with the media, the players’ pregame “sewer ball” session had begun. Ovechkin and a rotating cast of six to eight of his teammates — Protas, Sourdif, Tom Wilson, Lane Hutson, Matt Roy and others — stood in a circle, each getting two touches to keep a soccer ball in the air. It’s a game often seen in hockey arenas, and if you don’t see it, you hear it. Ovechkin, profanely and unsuccessfully, tried to argue for Roy’s elimination. Not long after, he was eliminated himself, lounging behind the wheel of a white golf cart and waiting for the game to restart.
Approximately two hours later, after the first standing ovation for Ovechkin, the Capitals were playing hockey. Strome was kicked out of the opening face-off circle, partially at the suggestion of referee Chris Rooney, so his winger could take the draw against Crosby. Ovechkin lost but fans chanted for “one more year” anyway.
As a hockey game, the ensuing three periods were boilerplate. Defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead 12:22 into the second period, and that score held deep into the third period. Chants increased in volume and frequency, and McMichael salted things away with a pair of goals in the final five minutes, including an empty-netter set up by Ovechkin, who clearly had no interest in taking the shot himself.
It was fitting in a sense, just as it was fitting for Ovechkin to wave off Crosby and Penguins, who lingered on the ice after the game for a potential playoff-style handshake line. Ovechkin can’t stop anyone — teammates, peers, media — from marking these moments, even when the timing isn’t perfect. And for the fans who’ve watched him since 2005, counted those 929 goals and bathed in the glory of the 2018 Stanley Cup championship after a lifetime of near-misses and not-closes, what’s the alternative?
Was this the end for Capitals fans and Alex Ovechkin? (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)
“Of course, they love me, but I think they love the (Capitals) boys,” Ovechkin said when asked what meant to hear the cheers, see the jerseys and feel the gratitude in the air on Sunday afternoon. “They love how we play, because we play for them. It’s a big moment right now for us. If we lose this game, we’re out (of a playoff spot). And everybody was dialed in and it was a solid game.”
On Tuesday, he will try to play another solid game. And eventually, the summer will come.