Washington Capitals general manager Chris Patrick said Friday he hasn’t yet talked with team captain Alex Ovechkin about whether the 2025-26 season will be his final campaign in the NHL.
Ovechkin is playing his 21st NHL season on an expiring contract. He is currently set to hit free agency ahead of what would be his age-41 campaign.
“We talked a little bit just about where the team is, and what he feels we need, and what I feel we need, but it didn’t really get too much into his future outside of this year,” Patrick said Friday when asked about his talks with Ovechkin.
“I would say, his conversation with me, he seems very focused on just the short-term here, and this team trying to get into the playoffs and have another shot at winning the Stanley Cup. So, yeah. You guys will continue to have to wait.”
Ovechkin has already hit multiple major career milestones through his historic first two decades in the NHL, including winning the Stanley Cup in 2018 and setting the NHL’s all-time goalscoring record in 2025.
Back at the beginning of the 2025-26 season, Ovechkin told reporters in October he didn’t have an answer as to his retirement plans and expects to take things “day by day.”
Ovechkin scored 44 goals last season, including the tally that broke Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goalscoring record, despite missing a month due to a fractured leg.
He has now added another 20 goals through the first 48 games of the 2025-26 season, extending his NHL-record total to 917 goals in 1,539 regular-season games.
Last spring, Ovechkin and the Capitals made a surprise trip to the second round of the playoffs before losing in five games to the Carolina Hurricanes.
In order to build on that run with another postseason appearance in 2026, the Capitals will have to make it out of a crowded Eastern Conference playoff race.
The Caps are heading into Friday deadlocked with the Pittsburgh Penguins in points but behind in points percentage, a tiebreaker that has Washington sitting just outside the playoff bubble.
Given Ovechkin’s uncertain future, the Capitals may have to approach the trade deadline without knowing if the 2026 postseason could be the team’s final run with their longtime captain.
Either way, it sounds like Patrick is looking at making a move ahead of the March 6 trade deadline. He told reporters Friday he was “actively pursuing” a trade for a winger.
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