Alex Ovechkin announced Monday that the 2026-27 season will be his last in the NHL, and Capitals fans are already jumping at what could be their last chance to bid him farewell in April.
Tickets for Ovechkin’s final regular-season home game at Capital One Arena skyrocketed on Monday. According to USA TODAY, the cheapest available tickets for the Capitals’ April 4, 2027 matchup against the Pittsburgh Penguins were listed at $822 as of Monday afternoon.
Lower-bowl seat prices are the most staggering. Main-concourse seats in Section 117 were starting at $1,307, with the game still six months away. Prices could keep rising as scarcity and interest increase, as evidenced in screenshots posted by ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski earlier on Monday.
According to TickPick’s Kyle Zorn, tickets over $800 would be the most expensive NHL regular-season ticket on record. They would also be more expensive than the cheapest ticket to get into Game 5 of last spring’s Stanley Cup Final.
Ovechkin and the Capitals will take the ice on April 4 against his longtime rival Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in a near-repeat of last season’s final Caps-Pens matchup. The two teams played in what was then thought to be Ovechkin’s potential final home game at Capital One Arena on April 12, 2026, with Ovechkin taking the game’s opening faceoff against Crosby.
While the game against Pittsburgh will be his final regular-season appearance in DC, the market for tickets elsewhere in the NHL is also booming because of Ovechkin’s announcement. According to Ticket Data’s Keith Pagello, ticket prices for all 40 Capitals road games for the rest of the season have jumped an average of 63 percent since this morning’s retirement news.
That calculation includes Washington’s final regular-season game against the Philadelphia Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Arena on April 10. Per Ticketmaster, the cheapest seat available for that game is currently $346.
Ovechkin announced Monday that he and his family decided over the summer that this would be his final NHL season. “I love this game so much, but I know in my heart it’s the right decision,” he said.
The 2026-27 season will be Ovechkin’s 22nd in his NHL career, during which he became the league’s all-time leading goal scorer and won the Stanley Cup in 2018.
Note: Ticket prices included in this article are as of posting and will fluctuate.
