{"id":606433,"date":"2026-04-14T14:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606433\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T14:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:45:07","slug":"washington-capitals-alex-ovechkin-close-to-retiring-sticks-to-his-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606433\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Capitals\u2019 Alex Ovechkin, close to retiring, sticks to his rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"JL4P36332RGZLNEDZDVNMXZYT4\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">It\u2019s a hacky-sack circle, basically, but played with a soccer ball, and it has become a favorite pregame warmup for NHL hockey players. So on Sunday afternoon, not long before what may well have been his final home game with the Washington Capitals, Alex Ovechkin, the most prolific scorer in the sport\u2019s history, led one more game of sewer ball with his teammates in the corridors beneath the Capital One Arena stands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a hacky-sack circle, basically, but played with a soccer ball, and it has become a favorite pregame&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85,4791],"class_list":{"0":"post-606433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-washington-capitals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606433","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=606433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}