Alex Ovechkin retirement email controversy, explained
Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Are you wondering about a retracted Washington Capitals email announcing Alex Ovechkin's final season? And you're confused? We got you covered.
Alex Ovechkin will turn 40 years old before the 2025-26 NHL season begins. Already a Stanley Cup Champion and the league's record-holder for all-time goals scored, it's been clear for awhile now the Great 8's career wouldn't last much longer.
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On Thursday, hockey fans everywhere were told Ovechkin had one season left in him. The Washington icon would hang up his skates for good after the 2025-26 campaign. It felt like a trustworthy report, too, since the news was anticlimactically announced with a single line in an email to season ticket holders.
But while the email was real, the contents were incorrect. Let us explain.
Wait, what? The Capitals sent out an email that Ovechkin was retiring after next season and then immediately walked it back?
Yep. That seems to be what happened here. An email went out to season ticket holders purporting October 2025 as the start of Ovechkin's final season. Many media outlets ran with the story, naturally, as the news came from the team itself.
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However the announcement felt off.
Full disclosure: this was going to be a post about how weird it was that the news was broken via email to season ticket holders as opposed to say, the a big splash from the NHL, a major insider like Darren Dreger, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis or, obviously, Ovechkin himself.
We learned why shortly after. The email was apparently sent as a mistake.
A mistake!?
Hey, it happens!
DC Backcheck's Sammi Silber got to the bottom of this all rather quickly. Silber confirmed with the team the email was incorrect.
"An alleged marketing email went out to Capitals fans today saying this will be Alex Ovechkin's final NHL season. Got word from the team that this is NOT accurate and nothing was sent," Silber reported.
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"Neither Washington nor Ovechkin has officially announced anything confirming this, though he intends to play out the final year of his contract. At breakdown day, president of hockey operations Brian MacLellan even said he wouldn't rule anything out when it came to No. 8 regarding a potential extension."
Have the Capitals said anything publically?
Yep. They quickly jumped online to confirm the email "mistakenly alluded to next year being Alex Ovechkin's final year".
Give it to us straight: Is Ovi retiring in 2025-26 or what?
Who knows!? At this point it truly seems no decision has been made.
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"When he is ready to announce what's next, he will," Silber wrote. "He returned to Moscow, but that is routine for the 39-year-old every offseason. Still, as he pushes 40 and as the Capitals prepare for the next era without him, expect he and coach Spencer Carbery to discuss what exactly his role will be next year and if his minutes will start to cut back."
What we can say is that Ovechkin's contract expires at the end of next season. And while it seems impossible to imagine Ovi playing anywhere other than in Washington, surely hockey fans felt the same before seeing Gordie Howe playing for the Whalers, Ray Bourque playing for the Avalanche or Martin Broduer playing for the Blues.
Ovechkin has accomplished just about all he can on the ice throughout his career. He deserves to have the final say in how his time in the NHL ends. And when that time comes, fans should get to hear it from him — whether or not they have Caps season tickets.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Alex Ovechkin retirement email controversy, explained
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Boston Globe
26 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Zdeno Chara was surprised to be elected to the IIHF Hall of Fame, but he shouldn't have been
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With apologies to Chief Brody, looks like you're gonna need a bigger bench. Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
Maple Leafs' offseason to-do list: Cement Matthew Knies into core, upgrade at centre
The Shanaplan is out. In its place? Well, that remains to be determined. That's what this offseason for the Toronto Maple Leafs will establish: a new direction for the franchise after 11 years with Brendan Shanahan at the helm as team president. What needs to be done with general manager Brad Treliving now leading the charge? A lot. Advertisement All indications are that Marner intends to go elsewhere July 1. 'We'll have to see,' Treliving said when asked about Marner's future Thursday, noting Marner had his 'say' in a process that had yet to really start. The Leafs already know Marner was unwilling to sign an extension during the season. Will they — will Treliving — try to change his mind in the coming weeks? Try to sell him on coming back and finishing his career at home in Toronto? And if they manage to do so and/or Marner reconsiders, how much are they prepared to pay him? We know the Leafs, when they were still run by Shanahan, were determined to keep Marner. 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What if Tavares won't dip below, say, $6 million on a multiyear deal? What then? Are they prepared to let their former captain walk? And if so, what's the plan to replace him? That's Tavares' leverage in all this: It would be difficult (though not impossible) for the Leafs to replace him. The big question with Knies at this point: What's his ceiling? The floor might be what he showed this past season: A 29-goal, 58-point physical top-line monster who kills penalties, dominates around the net on the power play and elevates his game in the playoffs. Knies told me once he hoped to become like Mikko Rantanen one day. That's top-10-player-in-the-league territory, a pretty grand aspiration for Knies. The biggest obstacle to his getting there might be his playmaking. Rantanen, who scored 55 goals in one season, has six seasons of at least 50 assists. Knies hasn't shown that kind of creativity as a passer yet, not even close, really. 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It's a position the organization has struggled to improve over the years. It gets no easier this summer with a thin pool of free-agent centres. Whether they bring back Tavares or not, the Leafs need an improvement in the No. 2 spot. Tavares' 38 goals were impressive but also kind of beside the point. He struggled again to produce and drive play in the playoffs, particularly against the Florida Panthers. It was part of why the Leafs unraveled in that series: Their second line, Nylander included, was increasingly outplayed by the Panthers' top three units. Advertisement Matt Duchene is one potential free-agent target. Sam Bennett could be another. Does either one want to play in Toronto? And if so, for what? Does a trade for a new 2C make more sense? Is it even feasible? The Leafs need to adopt a more creative approach to solving this puzzle, especially now with Tavares about to enter his mid-30s. More creativity, more bold thinking in general, is what this franchise needs. They'll need to procure a more legitimate 3C on top of that so that swinging Max Domi back there doesn't become the answer once again for Berube. (There's no chance the Leafs give Nylander another run in the middle … right?) Maybe that's Tavares, with someone else coming in to play directly behind Matthews. The front office and coaching staff can probably pencil Bobby McMann into a third-line left wing position and Scott Laughton into a fourth-line role of some kind. All bets are off otherwise. Paying $4.5 million cap dollars for Kämpf and Calle Järnkrok to play with Laughton ($1.5 million) on the fourth line doesn't make a lot of sense. The Leafs probably need to look at moving at least one player this offseason. Injecting more size, physicality and bite into the forward group, to better align with the Berube Way, figures to be part of the equation for Treliving. It's a group that needs a lot more utility, too, forwards who can play all over the lineup and contribute in multiple ways. Not in the forward department but worthy of a look for the front office this summer: Adding a right-shooting defender who can move pucks and create some offence. That someone would allow Oliver Ekman-Larsson to slide back to the left side where he's much more effective as, well, a puck-mover and creator of offence. If another defender comes in, who's going out? Robertson sought a trade last summer, didn't get it, and eventually returned on a one-year deal. It didn't go well. Though he scored 15 goals, seventh most among Leafs, his impact was marginal otherwise. Advertisement Robertson registered only seven assists in 69 games and lost his job in the playoffs. So what do the Leafs do now? Try as hard as they possibly can to move him for something before qualifying offers are due at the end of June. If they can't get anything of value — what's that bar even? — they can decline to make him a qualifying offer and let him walk as a free agent. The fact Robertson is a restricted free agent, with arbitration rights, could make trading him a tad more difficult. Letting him walk for nothing doesn't feel like good asset management, but does it make sense to bring back a player who doesn't fit this roster and clearly needs a fresh start? It was only last summer the Leafs tried hard to trade Timothy Liljegren, failed to do so and then signed him to a two-year contract. Liljegren promptly lost his job and the Leafs were eventually forced to trade him to the San Jose Sharks for whatever they could get It's worth noting Robertson won't turn 24 until September. And it's not as if this team has lots of young talent coming at forward. That's the argument for keeping him a little while longer. Steven Lorentz and Max Pacioretty are the other forwards set to hit unrestricted free agency. Though Pacioretty seems destined to play elsewhere, if he decides to keep playing at all, Lorentz warrants a discussion for Treliving and company. He was pretty close to the ideal fourth-liner last season. His motor was always running. He packed a physical punch. He defended well. He killed penalties. And he kicked in some offence, scoring as many goals (eight) as Domi in about 200 fewer minutes. And he did it all with a smile on his face for $775,000. To keep him would require a raise, and paying that much more for a fourth-liner, when fourth-liners are easily replaceable, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The Leafs also have to be mindful of the fourth-liners they already (maybe) have — Laughton, Kämpf, Järnkrok and Pontus Holmberg. They don't exactly need Lorentz back, even if he brings his own distinct dimension. Advertisement The Leafs do need to qualify Holmberg, a pending RFA, and get him signed to a new contract. Part of the discussion with Holmberg: deciding whether he's better off playing centre or wing. Related to that discussion perhaps is what happens with Kämpf. If Holmberg is playing centre, it should be on the fourth line. Now that he's No. 1 on the front office depth chart, Treliving might want to tweak and/or trim the group in his image. Shane Doan and Derek Clancey were Treliving hires. Brandon Pridham, Hayley Wickenheiser, Darryl Metcalf and Ryan Hardy, all of them assistant GMs, were not. Meanwhile, the Leafs might be inclined to alter their designated leadership group. If Marner departs, does the team simply continue with Morgan Rielly and, assuming he stays, Tavares as alternate captains? Or is it time for something different, if only as a symbolic gesture to change? Given that he's under contract longer than anyone else (2032), Nylander belongs in the discussion and so might one of Tanev or Jake McCabe if the Leafs do decide to go in a different direction. — Stats and research courtesy of Hockey Reference, Natural Stat Trick and Puckpedia. (Top photo of Matthew Knies: Mike Carlson / Getty Images)
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
Lane Hutson's next contract with Canadiens is minefield that might need to wait
As the Montreal Canadiens work on organizing their financial structure for the coming seasons in a rising salary-cap world, there are two players' contracts they will need to plan for that are somewhat abstract. The first is Lane Hutson, and the second is Ivan Demidov. The Canadiens are still a year away from needing to worry about Demidov's contract, and he still has a lot to prove. But in Hutson's case, he could sign a new contract as of July 1, and he has already proven a lot at the NHL level. Advertisement He is the type of play-driving, puck-moving defenceman the modern game requires, but he also doesn't fit the archetype of the big, bruising defenceman that playoff hockey requires. To be fair, there aren't really any defencemen who fit both categories, and there are few in the NHL who fit the first category as well as Hutson. But the second category is something that will also surely come into play in the Canadiens' evaluation of what Hutson's next contract looks like, and there are different examples of how to approach his second contract across the NHL. Hutson mentioned in his exit interview with the media that he would like to have his contract settled sooner rather than later, and part of that is because he is frankly uncomfortable talking about it. The longer his next contract remains unsettled, the longer he will have to answer questions about it. But when general manager Kent Hughes was asked about Hutson's contract at his end-of-season news conference, he didn't make it sound like it was an urgent matter that necessarily required immediate attention and made a point of mentioning that this administration waited for the end of Cole Caufield's entry-level contract before negotiating an extension, while Juraj Slafkovský and Kaiden Guhle each signed as soon as they were eligible last summer. 'For sure we'll talk to his agent,' Hughes said. 'I saw that he mentioned he'd like to get his contract settled sooner rather than later. So we'll call his agent and we'll see. But it's not like it's a priority. I find it's important to communicate, to learn what's important to Lane, and from there we'll see if there's a way to agree on a contract. With Cole, we waited to the end of his (entry-level) contract. With Slaf and Guhle, it happened with a year left. So, I think we'll start talking and see where it goes.' Advertisement What happened with Slafkovský and Guhle was that they accepted contract terms that were viewed as somewhat team-friendly by the Canadiens. They were comfortable with the annual average value for Slafkovský ($7.6 million) and Guhle ($5.55 million), even if it represented a bit of a risk. So when Hughes mentions learning 'what's important to Lane,' this is surely what he means. Is Hutson willing to work with the Canadiens on accepting less money and falling in line with their internal salary structure in exchange for the security of a long-term contract? Or will he look to be paid what his production in his rookie NHL season demonstrated he is worth, particularly in the context of a rising salary cap? Looking at this in the most basic terms possible, it is not very difficult to find a group of comparable players to Hutson that we can use as a basis for this exercise. Filtering NHL defencemen who are 26 years old or younger, played at least 50 games and had at least 0.5 points per game last season (remember, Hutson had 66 points in 82 games as a rookie in his age-20 season) gives us a list of 14 players. Of those, three were still on their entry-level contracts: Hutson, Luke Hughes and Jackson LaCombe. That leaves 11 defencemen playing on their second or third contracts to use as a basis for comparison: Rasmus Dahlin, Cale Makar, Moritz Seider, Mikhail Sergachev, Miro Heiskanen, Owen Power, Jake Sanderson, Quinn Hughes, Noah Dobson, Thomas Harley and Evan Bouchard. That might seem like a random order in which to list those players, but it's not. They are listed in order of the cap hits on their current contracts, from a high of $11 million for Dahlin to a low of $3.9 million for Bouchard. That list represents three different approaches to a second NHL contract. The bottom three names on the list — Dobson, Harley and Bouchard — as well as Dahlin and Sergachev, signed two- or three-year bridge contracts out of entry-level, with Dobson and Bouchard due for new contracts this summer and Harley up next summer. All three of them are about to become very rich men. Sergachev signed his third contract in 2022 for eight years at $8.5 million per coming off a three-year bridge deal at $4.8 million a year. Dahlin signed his eight-year, $88 million contract in 2023, also coming off a three-year bridge at $6 million a year. Dobson, Harley and Bouchard each signed bridge deals at or just below $4 million a year, with Dobson signing for three years and the other two for two years. Advertisement Both Makar and Hughes signed six-year deals out of entry-level a couple of months apart in 2021 that walked them right to unrestricted free agency, with Makar's contract buying one UFA year and Hughes' none. They signed for $9 million and $7.85 million a year, respectively, and both can hit the UFA market in 2027. Their next contracts will be monsters, but they also demonstrate a mechanism to keep the cap hit reasonable while locking in prime years. The trade-off is the stress in Vancouver about what Hughes will choose to do when his contract expires, and the Avalanche having to trade away Mikko Rantanen in anticipation of Makar's next contract. The rest of the players on that list — Seider, Heiskanen, Power and Sanderson — signed long-term right out of entry-level. For many reasons aside from this very rudimentary exercise, Sanderson's eight-year contract worth $8.05 million a year signed in 2023 can serve as a basis for comparison here, and demonstrates why this could be a complicated negotiation between Hutson's camp and the Canadiens. It would be easy for Hutson's representatives to argue he is a more productive player than Sanderson and is therefore worth more than him. That's not a knock on Sanderson, of course, since only three defencemen in NHL history had a more productive rookie season than Hutson's 66 points this season. But it would be just as easy for the Canadiens to argue Sanderson fits both categories of defencemen described above, merging a play-driving puck-mover with a big body who can drive playoff success. For instance, no defenceman who played at least 75 minutes at five-on-five in these playoffs had a higher offensive zone start percentage than Hutson's 87.5 percent, according to Natural Stat Trick. In fact, only two skaters were higher, Washington's Dylan Strome and Alex Ovechkin at 97.3 (!) percent. The next highest defenceman was Carolina's Shayne Gostisbehere at 78.6 percent. Sanderson, however, only started 47.62 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone in the playoffs, suggesting his value to the Senators goes beyond his production, which is also evident in Sanderson's predominant role on both the power play and penalty kill. The same argument could be made about Seider ($8.55 million) and Power ($8.35 million), though neither of them played in the playoffs. The reality of the NHL, however, is that offence gets you paid, and Hutson's offence is truly special. Combine that reality with the new financial landscape of the NHL with the salary cap expected to rise to $113.5 million by 2027-28 — which would be the second season of Hutson's next contract — and the conditions are ripe for Hutson to seek a big payday based on what he's already demonstrated and also what he is expected to do offensively in the future. Advertisement Sanderson was in the first year of his new contract this season, and it took up 9.15 percent of the $88 million salary cap. That same percentage in 2026-27 — when the cap is expected to be set at $104 million — would represent an AAV of just over $9.5 million on a long-term contract, and that's assuming Hutson's camp doesn't feel he should be paid more than Sanderson. It should also be noted that of the 11 defencemen we are looking at here, Sanderson was one of only two — Power is the other — who signed his second contract before the entry-level deals expired. So if the Canadiens and/or Hutson decided to wait until next year, it would hardly be unprecedented. Something else Hughes said at his end-of-season news conference seems to apply, when he evaluated Slafkovský's season coming off his big contract extension last summer. 'I think he came in this year with new expectations, a new contract, and also sometimes, when you have success for the first time, sometimes you get here and you're not ready for what's waiting for you,' Hughes said. 'You hear often about a sophomore slump, and I think that's something we'll need to pay attention to as a team and not expect we'll be back next season and it will be easy.' All of that could easily apply to Hutson, though if we're being honest, it doesn't seem all that likely. Hutson's ability to adjust and find creative ways to not only survive at his size but find new and innovative ways to thrive has defined his hockey career. There's no reason to believe that will change. But one possible reason why Hughes seemed unrushed in talking about Hutson's next contract is the list of defencemen we looked at for this basic exercise. It is a group of the best young defencemen in the NHL, one that doesn't include Adam Fox because he was a year too old to be included, even if he is likely to be Hutson's closest comparable in terms of size, impact and production. Fox, it is worth noting, signed his seven-year deal at $9.5 million a year in November of 2021, in the midst of a career-high 74-point season and before the expiry of his entry-level contract. If Hutson were able to follow up his tremendous rookie season with an even better sophomore season, would those comparables change much? He's already put himself in very select company. Advertisement If we look at the contracts signed by Hughes since he arrived, one theme has emerged: He often gets what he wants. He wanted a short term on Sam Montembeault's contract, and that's what he got. He wanted a certain number for Jake Evans' contract, and that's what he got. But most notably, he wanted Caufield's and Slafkovský's second contracts to come in under Nick Suzuki's $7.875 million cap number, and that's what he got in both cases. If Hughes wants that to happen again with Hutson, it seems rather evident it won't happen this summer because Hutson would be leaving a significant amount of money on the table if he agreed to something like that, perhaps as much as $2 million a year, or even more. And the threat of a potential offer sheet didn't impact nine of the 11 defencemen we looked at here signing their second contracts at the end of their entry-level deals. In other words, as Hughes suggested a few weeks ago, there is nothing pressing, and it would appear to be in the best interests of both parties to wait and let things play out a little longer.
