It is no surprise to see Alex Ovechkin re-sign with the Capitals, but the five calendar year length of his agreement raised a couple of eyebrows.
The new contract will come with a $9.5 million cap hit, a bit fewer than his prior 13-12 months deal, but it is the time period that actually sticks out.
Ovechkin may be the greatest player in Capitals franchise heritage and a person of the best gamers of all time, but he is turning 36 in September and Father Time, as they say, is undefeated. There is an aspect of hazard that arrives with a agreement that very long for a player in his mid-to-late 30s.
But five a long time was not the place the talks began.
“I questioned for three, but they reported ‘Ovi we will need you for 5,’” Ovechkin claimed in the course of his press convention on Thursday.
Standard supervisor Brian MacLellan speedily interjected, “I’m heading to contact him out on that one.”
Even if Ovechkin’s comment was tongue-in-cheek, it appears to be both sides had been initially speaking about a small-phrase deal before talks advanced.
“I consider it was far more Alex’s choice how prolonged he wanted to participate in,” MacLellan stated. “We talked shorter term a couple of times, the concept of taking part in a shorter expression and viewing how he’s doing health-intelligent and then re-signing once again right after that. In the conclusion, I believe he came up with the selection.”
There is certainly no key that both the crew and the player want Ovechkin to be a Funds for lifetime. Alternatively than indicator a sequence of shorter-phrase deals right up until he decided to phase absent, the two sides rather determined not to conquer close to the bush and to just indication a deal that equally sides assume can bring Ovechkin to the conclusion of his career.
“In his head, which is as extensive as he wants to participate in, for now,” MacLellan mentioned.
Matters transform and possibly Ovechkin feels in different ways in five a long time or perhaps he is shut ample to Wayne Gretzky’s scoring report that he decides to come back again for yet another yr. But for now, 5 decades is how very long he designs to enjoy and it is very clear this was not a selection Ovechkin took evenly.
“I consider he produced a good deal of these selections with his loved ones,” MacLellan reported. “He went back and forth a handful of situations, talked to his mother and father, talked to his spouse, I assume he has a few advisors that aid him out much too. They came up with the five many years. We went from there following the 5 a long time was proven and we tried out to obtain a dollars quantity that could work for everybody.”
That is 5 a lot more decades of the Ovechkin period and then the opportunity near of one particular of the best hockey occupations of all time.
