WASHINGTON — Washington hockey fans turned Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena into a farewell for Alexander Ovechkin, chanting “ONE MORE YEAR” and “OVI, OVI” during the Capitals’ final home game of the regular season.
The arena was dressed for the moment. Towels with two decades of Ovechkin pictures and the word “Gr8ness” sat on every seat, and multiple highlight reels rolled throughout the building, including one that traced his long relationship with Sidney Crosby. The Capitals beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-0, but the result was almost secondary to the sense that the day belonged to Ovechkin.
Dylan Strome even got himself booted from the opening faceoff so Ovechkin and Crosby could square off. Before the game, Ovechkin spent at least a half-hour in the bowels of the arena playing soccer keepie-uppie with teammates, and at one point he stayed in the circle after playing rock-paper-scissors to keep his spot.
Then came the postgame moment that matched the mood in the stands. Ovechkin declined Pittsburgh’s handshake line and, when asked why, said only: “I haven’t decided yet.”
That answer left the day hanging between tribute and uncertainty. Spencer Carbery, the Capitals coach, said the team had to treat Sunday as a goodbye if it really was the end. He said Ovechkin looks at it differently, as if he has not decided yet, and that the club needed to be ready either way.
The backdrop is impossible to miss. Ovechkin is 40, his contract is expiring and he is the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer, a player who entered the sporting consciousness more than two decades ago and has spent 21 years absorbing the wear of hockey at its highest level. The possibility that he could be hanging up his skates this summer has turned every gesture, from a towel on a seat to a chant from the lower bowl, into something more loaded than a regular-season sendoff.
The Capitals and their fans behaved on Sunday as if they understood that. Ovechkin did not say it was over, but the building sounded ready for that answer anyway.
