{"id":547955,"date":"2026-04-08T20:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T20:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547955\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T20:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T20:08:13","slug":"alex-ovechkin-is-the-capitals-nominee-for-the-2026-bill-masterton-memorial-trophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547955\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin is the Capitals\u2019 nominee for the 2026 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Ovechkin was named the Capitals\u2019 nominee for the 2026 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy<\/a> on Wednesday morning. The trophy is awarded annually to the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey.<\/p>\n

The players are voted on by members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association, which RMNB is not part of (we\u2019re as confused as you are).<\/p>\n

Ovechkin, 40, is the third-oldest player in the NHL this season, his 21st in the league with the Washington Capitals. Despite his age and after breaking his leg last year<\/a>, Ovechkin has not missed a single game for the Capitals, putting him on track to play a full 82-game season for the first time since he was 32 years old.<\/p>\n

The Capitals captain also leads the team in scoring with 61 points (31g, 30a) in 78 games, a feat he hasn\u2019t accomplished since the 2022-23 campaign.<\/p>\n

On March 31, he hit the 30-goal mark for an all-time leading 20th time<\/a>, and just days before that, he recorded his 34th career hat trick<\/a>, scored his 1,000th career goal, regular season and playoffs combined<\/a>, and tied Gordie Howe for the most 25-goal seasons in NHL history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the season, Ovechkin also achieved a number of other historic feats:<\/p>\n

The Masterton Trophy is one of the few individual awards that Ovechkin has not picked up during his illustrious career. He finished fourth in voting for the award last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No Russian player has ever won the award since the trophy\u2019s inception following the 1967-68 season. Jose Theodore is the lone Capitals player to receive the honor, winning the trophy after the 2009-10 campaign.<\/p>\n

The list of 32 nominees will be narrowed down to three finalists. The winner is announced during the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin was named the Capitals\u2019 nominee for the 2026 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy on Wednesday morning. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-547955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116370899178015194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}