Alex Ovechkin’s final NHL contract could have apparently looked a bit different.
According to hockey insider Elliotte Friedman, Ovechkin and the Capitals initially discussed a two-year contract before ultimately agreeing to a one-year deal, which will be his last with the team after he announced plans to retire following this season. Friedman shared the new detail on the latest episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast.
“The only thing that kind of surprised me a bit (was that) he said he decided in the summer,” Friedman said of Ovechkin’s recent interview explaining his retirement decision. “Initially, the word was that Ovechkin and the Capitals were potentially talking about a two-year deal. Whether they were seriously talking about it or it had just been pitched by Ovechkin, a two-year deal had come up. So when I heard he was coming back, even though he signed a one-year contract, I kind of wondered if he thought he was going to play for two.”
Ovechkin ultimately signed a one-year contract worth $1 million in salary, plus a $3.25 million signing bonus and up to $4.75 million in performance bonuses. After signing in early July, Ovechkin himself raised the possibility of not ending his NHL career after the 2026-27 campaign, deliberately leaving that decision up in the air.
The legendary winger has also repeatedly said that he wants the final game of his playing career to come with his hometown club, Dynamo Moscow. Dynamo’s CEO, Anatoly Kharchuk, has already said the KHL club would build its roster around Ovechkin if he returns.
Friedman believes Ovechkin’s final decision to play only one more NHL season came, in part, after he realized his role with the Capitals would change drastically. Through Washington’s first three games of the season, Ovechkin has averaged just 13:28 of ice time per game. He played a career-low 12:46 in the season opener against the Carolina Hurricanes, 13:34 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and 14:05 against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
For context, Friedman noted that Ovechkin played a couple of games in the 14-minute range relatively early last season, but he didn’t play fewer than 14:05 in a game until his 59th appearance of the year. And during Wednesday’s 5-3 home-opening win over the Penguins, Ovechkin only received two third-period shifts from head coach Spencer Carbery and didn’t see the ice after Pittsburgh pulled their goalie for an extra attacker. He also hasn’t started a shift in the defensive zone.
“I would suspect that one of the things that Ovechkin kind of realized here was that it wasn’t going to be the same for him,” Friedman said. “Eventually, you’re going to slow down. Father Time is undefeated. We’re seeing that here. One of the reasons the Capitals felt that they had to change things was that last year they were slow, and it was too hard to score. They couldn’t do it the same way.
“They went out, got Tuch, and got Kyrou. You could see where this was going to go. It’s not like they were going to disrespect him, but his influence on the games was going to be diminished. He just wasn’t going to be doing the same thing that he did before. I would assume that when that became clear to him, I just didn’t know if he was going to last more than a year.”
Ovechkin’s reduced role always seemed to be part of the Capitals’ plans for this season, as the team added so much depth scoring at forward that Carbery would need to spread minutes all across the roster. Those calculations likely didn’t even account for the fact that Ovechkin would be in his age-41 season and had posted some of the NHL’s poorest skating-speed metrics last year.
“It’s a hard thing to answer, because I expect O to be O, but I also understand where he’s at in his career, and it’s my job to help him along, whether it’s deployment, minutes, power play deployment, all that stuff,” Carbery said last week. “And especially early in the year, because he hasn’t played any preseason games, of making sure that I’m watching early and trying to set him up for success.”
During Ovechkin’s illustrious career, the lowest time on ice per game he has ever averaged across a full season came last year when he averaged 17:26 per contest.
