Ovechkin retires, loses news cycle to 19 men over 40 in Arlington
The NHL's all-time leading goalscorer said his 22nd season with the Washington Capitals will be his last, and the hockey world had bigger things on its plate.
"...told him, pal, we are up two with nine minutes left in the third and I do not care who is retiring," the captain of a Sunday-morning beer league team said, still in his pads outside a public rink in Arlington, Virginia. "Ovechkin can post it after the handshake line like everybody else."
Alex Ovechkin told the Capitals this week that his 22nd NHL season will be his last. He scored more goals than anyone in league history and lifted a Stanley Cup. Fine. A hockey player is stopping hockey. In the sport's larger picture it barely registered.
The picture that mattered was the C-division final, where nineteen men over forty gave everything for a plastic trophy and a pitcher. One defenceman played through a hamstring he first pulled in 2009. A winger took a puck off the shin and stayed down for a flinty four seconds before crawling to the bench. That is warfare. That is what the Sunday crowd of nineteen paid nothing to see, and the Zamboni driver had the nerve to shout Ovechkin's news over the boards during a stoppage.
"He had 22 seasons to pick a day. He picked ours."
The losing goaltender, a dentist, stood on his head for 40 minutes and lost 5-3 on an empty-netter he called a stain on his family. No one from the Capitals attended.
Ovechkin holds the league scoring record and, as of Sunday, zero C-division titles. His farewell tour starts at the next Capitals game. The rematch is next Sunday at 6.40am, and only one of those events will decide anything.
