Should Alex Ovechkin ever require a blessing from his mom, Tatyana Ovechkina, before suiting up for one more NHL year, that endorsement is now firmly in hand.
Only six contests are left on Washington's 2025-26 schedule, and the franchise's captain — now 40 — still hasn't pledged to return for another campaign. Earlier, he indicated he intends to finish the current year first and only afterward weigh what comes next for him.
Speaking from Russia, where she lives, Ovechkina recently offered her take to TASS about the question of her son extending his career on the ice for a further season.
As relayed through a Google Translate rendering of her remarks to TASS, Ovechkina suggested that as long as he still wants to, feels healthy and remains capable, there's nothing standing in the way of him continuing. She added that he should keep going, though whether he can summon the stamina for yet another NHL grind is a matter best put to him directly.
Her comments landed not long after Nick Kypreos of Sportsnet indicated that the Caps star has no appetite for a goodbye circuit and admired the manner in which Wayne Gretzky disclosed his own retirement before stepping onto the ice for his last regular-season appearance.
How Ovechkin's body holds up once the campaign concludes continues to be the central question whenever people weigh his odds of prolonging his run in Washington. In a segment filmed for ESPN, the league's career goals leader explained to former Capital TJ Oshie that the way he feels physically at season's end would be the deciding factor in what he chooses to do.
Through this point in the year, the captain has appeared in every Washington game and is on track to log a complete 82-game slate for an initial time since 2017-18, when he was 32. Now in season number 21 of his career, he still paces the club offensively, leading all teammates with a 31-goal, 28-assist haul totaling 59 points across 76 outings.
Ovechkina becomes the newest figure in the captain's inner circle to lend symbolic encouragement toward a continued career, following a comparable gesture a week earlier from Sergei Fedorov, the veteran's longtime guide and one-time teammate.
Fedorov conveyed that, in his view, the captain cherishes — perhaps even relishes — the prospect of staying in the game, regardless of the location or the duration.
While Fedorov framed his comments around the idea that the captain would need 11 additional goals to be certain that his pooled total from the regular season plus the playoffs eclipses the 1,016 posted by Gretzky, the remarks stand as one more instance of his homeland rallying behind him, however long he opts to keep skating at the game's top level.