{"id":108632,"date":"2025-08-31T12:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T12:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/108632\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T12:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T12:07:08","slug":"capitals-alex-ovechkin-breaks-silence-on-retirement-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/108632\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin breaks silence on retirement decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin breaks silence on retirement decision<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Ovechkin’s 2024-25 season will forever be remembered in hockey history. The Great 8 defied Father Time, dominating the league at 39 years old on his way to a 73-point (44 goals, 29 assists) campaign despite playing in only 65 games.<\/p>\n

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One of those 44 goals just so happened to be more important than the others, breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal-scoring record with a snipe from his office on the power play past Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin.<\/p>\n

Now that he officially holds the mark as the greatest goal scorer of all time, many have wondered whether the 2025-26 season would be Ovi’s last, especially given that his contract expires at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

While that remains a possibility, retirement is not on Ovechkin’s mind right now. Here was what he had to say in a recent interview with Russian news publication Peterburg2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I understand that hockey is not forever, but I am not thinking about it now. According to my contract, I am prohibited from doing extreme sports, such as alpine skiing or snowboarding,” Ovechkin said.<\/p>\n

Ovechkin is set to enter the final season of the five-year, $47.5 million contract extension he signed with the Capitals in 2021.<\/p>\n

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Could Ovechkin start a new chase?<\/p>\n

If Alex Ovechkin has the desire to continue playing for a few more years, then perhaps there’s a new milestone he could chase to once again captivate the hockey world.<\/p>\n

With 897 career goals, Ovechkin needs just 103 more tucks to become the first player in NHL history to hit the 1,000-goal mark. That’s still a ways away, but if the Great 8 signed another two-year contract beyond next season, then things would start getting real.<\/p>\n

Ovechkin has averaged just over 49 goals per season throughout his 20-year career thus far. Multiply that by three, and he would well surpass 1,000, so you can even factor in some decline given his age.<\/p>\n

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It’s probably not on his mind right now, but hockey fans certainly have it in the back of their minds should Ovi decide to keep playing into his forties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin breaks silence on retirement decision originally appeared on The Sporting News Alex Ovechkin’s 2024-25 season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[10231,64,63,77824,77825,60412,575,85,56927],"class_list":["post-108632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-alex-ovechkin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hockey-history","tag-ilya-sorokin","tag-islanders","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-wayne-gretzky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}