Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin has kicked off his summer vacation in Turkey with his wife and children, and will be keeping busy as he gets some rest.
Per MatchTV, Ovechkin is set to spend the next month on vacation but will have a number of meetings, including one with KHL president Alexei Morozov. It's unclear what the nature of the meeting will be.
Ovechkin will also begin physical training and preparation for the upcoming Capitals season, which will mark his 21st year in the NHL. His initial training regimen will include yoga, stretching and beach volleyball.
He returned home to Russia at the end of May and is scheduled to play in the second annual "Match of the Year" KHL vs. NHL All-Star Game in Russia in mid-July.
Ovechkin is coming off a historic campaign that saw him put up 44 goals — the third most in the league — to overtake Wayne Gretzky as the NHL's all-time leading goal scorer, despite missing 16 games due to a broken leg. He added five goals in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs before D.C. was eliminated in the second round.
The 39-year-old is entering the final year of the five-year contract extension he inked in 2021. Ovechkin, who sits at 897 career NHL goals, has said in the past, though, that the plan is to play with his hometown team, Dynamo Moscow, after his time with the Capitals comes to an end.
Though recent speculation and questions have surrounded whether or not that will be his final NHL season, he has not made any decision with regard to his future.
Capitals' Alex Ovechkin Makes Big Career Decision
After breaking the legendary Wayne Gretzky’s longstanding record for most career goals, few would blame Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin if he decided to call it a career.
There has been plenty of speculation about what the future holds for the 39-year-old Russian, and Capitals fans got a little scare last week when an email sent out referring to the 2025-26 season as Ovechkin’s last — a decision the team quickly addressed as inaccurate.
“No decision has been made on Alex Ovechkin’s future following the 2025-26 NHL season. An email was sent from an individual with the corporate sales department that mistakenly alluded to next year being Alex Ovechkin’s final year,” the team wrote on X.
Though Ovechkin has yet to make an official decision about how many more years—if any—he plans to play in the NHL, the three-time Hart Memorial Trophy winner (NHL MVP award) has reportedly decided when his next hockey game will be, and it’s sooner than some fans might think.
In a recent interview with Russian news outlet Match TV, Utah Mammoth defenseman and fellow countryman Mikhail Sergachev disclosed that Ovechkin will play in the second annual “Match of the Year” between all-stars from the NHL and the Russian Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) on July 13.
Ovechkin's reported decision is a big one given it could be the final time he plays in international competition given the Russian national team has been banned from the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, due to the country's ongoing conflict with Ukraine.
The first iteration of the NHL-KHL exhibition happened last year at CSKA Arena in Moscow and ended in an 8-8 tie, but Ovechkin made quite an impact, scoring the game’s first goal and winning MVP.
Ovechkin, who scored 44 goals and 73 points in 65 games this season, is back in Russia for the offseason having flown back at the end of May after the Capitals were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs by the Carolina Hurricanes.
Next year is the last on Ovechkin’s contract with the Capitals. Barring a contract extension being signed between now and next offseason, Ovechkin will hit unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2026.
Ovechkin has expressed a desire to finish his professional hockey career with Dynamo Moscow, the KHL team he began his career with and played for back in the 2012-13 season during the NHL lockout.
