Pittsburgh PenguinsAlex Ovechkin told the hockey world on Monday that 2026-27 will be his last NHL season, 21 years to the day after his debut. He has said he wants to play his final game for Dynamo Moscow. Before any of that, there are 82 games left on the Washington schedule, starting with tonight's home opener against Pittsburgh, and one question that matters more than the farewell tour: how many more goals are in him?
He starts the season on 929, the most in NHL history, 35 clear of Wayne Gretzky on the all-time goals list. Through two games he has no goals, one assist and one shot. More telling than the zero is the clock. Ovechkin played 12:46 in the opener and 13:34 in the second game, more than four minutes under the lowest season average of his career.
The argument here is simple. Last season's numbers say he is still one of the better even-strength goal scorers in the league. This October's deployment treats him like a player who is not. Give him the minutes and 960 is realistic. Keep him at 13 a night and he will scrape to 950.
Is he still a good goal scorer at 41?
At five-on-five, yes, and it is not close to a charity case. Among the 328 forwards who played at least 60 games last season, Ovechkin ranked 23rd in five-on-five goals per 60 minutes at 1.13, and 22nd in individual expected goals per 60 at 0.97. He scored 19 even-strength goals on 16.3 expected, so he was finishing a little above his chances rather than living on luck.
His on-ice expected goals share at five-on-five was 51 per cent. Washington was not bleeding chances when he was on the ice. For a player who turned 41 on 17 September, that is remarkable, and it is the part of his game the farewell coverage is skipping.
| Ovechkin, 2025-26 | Goals | Expected goals | Shots on goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| All situations | 32 | 33.8 | 244 |
| 5-on-5 | 19 | 16.3 | 138 |
| 5-on-4 power play | 4 | 7.8 | 80 |
So what actually declined?
Two things. The shot volume and the power play.
The power play is the bigger story. Ovechkin had five power-play goals last season. He had 14 the year before and at least 13 in every full season since 2015-16. But the chances were still there. At five-on-four he put 80 shots on goal worth 7.8 expected goals and scored four. That is a 5 per cent conversion rate from the spot that built his career, and it looks far more like a bad year than a vanished skill.
Washington's response has been to take the time away. He averaged 4:15 a game at five-on-four last season. Through two games this season it is 2:16. His five-on-five time has dropped from 12:16 to 9:32.
How many goals does he finish with?
Last season Ovechkin scored 1.34 goals per 60 minutes across all situations. Hold that rate and change only the minutes, and the season looks like this.
| Scenario, 82 games | Ice time a game | Goals | Career total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last season's workload | 17:27 | 32 | 961 |
| This October's workload | 13:10 | 24 | 953 |
| Fourth-line minutes | 11:00 | 20 | 949 |
Every row assumes he stays healthy and scores at last season's rate, which at 41 is generous. That is the point. The difference between a farewell season that ends in the 960s and one that ends just shy of 950 is mostly a coaching decision, and 1,000, which would need 71 goals, is not in any row.
There is also nobody to measure him against. The best recent seasons in Pucky's records by players aged 39 or older are his own: 44 goals at 39, then 32 at 40. Joe Pavelski scored 27 at 39 in 2023-24. Evgeni Malkin scored 19 at 39 last season and has hinted he may be close to the end too. Corey Perry scored 17 at 40. Ovechkin is already outside every comparison.
Is Washington right to cut his minutes?
The case for it goes like this. Washington finished with 95 points last season and still missed the playoffs. A team in that spot cannot hand out ice time as a retirement gift, and two games against Carolina and Tampa Bay are too few to say the coaching staff has made a permanent call. A 41-year-old who averaged under three shots a game may simply be better in shorter shifts, and keeping him fresh for April is a defensible plan. Younger forwards need power-play reps, and a five-on-four unit that scored on 17.8 per cent of its chances last season needed something to change.
The other side is the one the numbers support. Ovechkin's five-on-five scoring rate last season was top 25 among forwards, his on-ice results were positive, and his power-play slump came with nearly eight expected goals behind it. Cutting a player like that to 13 minutes takes goals away from a team that needs them. He is not a passenger who needs hiding. He is a shooter who had a cold year from his best spot.
Washington is managing a decline that has not yet happened at even strength. He should be back on the top power-play unit by November.
What to watch
Two numbers will say more than the goal total over the first month. His five-on-four minutes, because that is where the goals have always come from, and his shots per game, because a player shooting three times a night at his conversion rate scores 30. Both are on his player page and the league stats board.
We have written before about how Washington plans for life after Ovechkin, with Tom Wilson at the centre of it, and about the summer spending that followed last season's miss. That future now has a date. The present still has a goal scorer in it, if Washington lets him play like one.