Alex Ovechkin no longer sounds completely confident that he’ll be suiting up for Russia at the PyeongChang Olympics.
“We’ll hope I’ll be allowed to participate,” he said in Russian, according to Sport-Express via a Washington Post translation. “There’s always a chance.”
Ovechkin has for years said that he planned to play in the 2018 Winter Games even if the NHL doesn’t participate.
The NHL announced in April that it would not send players to the Olympics for the first time since 1994. That’s when Ovechkin was very firm in saying he would defy the league.
“I said already, I’m going and it doesn’t matter what,” Ovechkin said on April 4.
A key man in this situation is Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, who has not been quoted in mainstream media on the Ovechkin issue since April.
Leonsis supported Ovechkin last year but backed off a bit in April, according to a Sports Business Daily story after the NHL announcement.
“What the league now does with the IOC, I will wait to see what happens,” Leonsis said, according to the report.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has repeated that the league expects all NHL players to stay with their clubs during the Olympics. The league has not announced what sanctions, if any, players (or their clubs) would face for going to the Olympics.
