Alex Ovechkin was asked about retirement during a recent Russian-language interview with his friend and blogger Amiran Sardarov.
Ovechkin revealed that he would have hung up his skates already if he was no longer enjoying the sport — apparently no matter if he was close to the goals record or not.
“As long as I enjoy [playing], as long as I get a thrill out of it, there’s no point in finishing,” Ovechkin said per a transcription by sports.ru and a translation by Google Translate. “The hardest period is after vacation. You’ve played volleyball, gone to the gym for fun, and when you come out [from vacation], you need to run cross-country, lift heavy weights, go on a diet. And then you think: ‘Why do I need this, I have everything, I have enough of everything.’ But after three to four days of suffering like that, you get into a routine and realize that you still love this business. If I didn’t love it, I would have finished already.”
Earlier in the summer, Ovechkin spoke about his deep disdain for training camp and getting back in shape during a different Russian-language interview.
“I hate preseason,” Ovechkin said. “I really hate it. I don’t like to just train. This is the hardest thing. Imagine, you arrived after your vacation, you have a tan, everything is fine, you’re happy. And your coach calls you and says, ‘Well, Sash? Tomorrow we begin training.’ You go to training, then rest, then another training session. I hate it, I can’t stand it.”
He added jokingly, “I just want to be done with hockey.”
Ovechkin is entering his twentieth season in the NHL this fall and has two years remaining on his contract with the Washington Capitals. He’s 41 goals shy of Wayne Gretzky for a share of the NHL’s all-time goals record, which should provide ample motivation to push through those difficult times.
But The Great 8 has seemingly put more focus and thought on his life after hockey. He revealed in his interview with Sardarov that he is planning to move back to Russia when his career is over.
“In Russia, all my friends, relatives, Nastya’s relatives are here too,” Ovechkin said. “I feel more comfortable in Russia at the moment than there. … [When] our season is ending, and we want to fly home right away because we miss home, our family, our friends.”
He added, “I’m building a new house, in the Moscow region. I hope we’ll move next year. A normal little house. I won’t say how many square meters. Why do I need to know? I’ll invite you to visit. You’ll leave the camera outside the house.”
Ovechkin does not have interest “at the moment” in becoming the Minister of Sports in Russia. Per Wikipedia, the job oversees the implementation of government policy and regulation of sport, providing state services and federal funding for athletes, and also managing public property in the area of sport and physical fitness in Russia.
“I am not ready to answer whether I am ready and want to become a minister,” Ovechkin said. “It is hard – you will not see your family again, you are on the road. It would be better if I came to your show every day.”
With only potentially 164 regular-season games left in his NHL career, Ovechkin — like many professional athletes nearing the end of their careers — is envisioning how much his life and identity will be altered once he’s off the ice.
“It will be hard for me to change,” Ovechkin said. “Throughout my entire conscious life I have been waking up, training, playing, and at some point it will all end, I will have to find another way. But we will go, we will search, but what to do?
“At 40, sitting on the couch, drinking and watching TV, YouTube is not an option. It’s not for me. I need to do something and develop somehow.”
Reflecting on his career, Ovechkin never thought he’d have the success and reach the milestones that he has in the NHL.
“I am very happy for my parents, because they really gave a lot of health and strength so that I could become something good,” Ovechkin said. “No one thought that I would become who I am now.
“I definitely didn’t think I would become a superstar. I thought I would go to the NHL, show what I could do, and then we’ll see what happens. It turned out the way it did.”
In the end, when his ride is over, he will miss what his life was like with the Capitals and his time in DC.
“When I leave America, I will miss hockey,” Ovechkin said. “My childhood dream was to go to the NHL, not to America. I could have ended up in Canada. I can easily say that Washington is my second home, I feel comfortable there. Everyone knows me there, everyone loves me, I know and love everyone there. But home is home.”