Alex Ovechkin says he is waiting until after the Washington Capitals’ season is over to decide whether he’s calling it a career or returning to play one more year.

The NHL’s career goal-scoring leader announced his intentions in a clip of a pre-taped interview with Capitals radio broadcaster John Walton that aired Wednesday.

"We're going to make a decision in the summer," Ovechkin said, adding he needed to talk with his family, owner Ted Leonsis, president of hockey operations Brian MacLellan and general manager Chris Patrick.

Ovechkin said health would be the biggest factor: “I’m going to be 41 years old in September, so you just have to be smart about it.”

He has been peppered with questions for several months about whether he’ll retire or play a 22nd season in the league. Ovechkin's current contract expires June 30.

Washington will have just three games left after playing at Toronto on Wednesday night and faces an uphill climb to make the playoffs.

Monday was the one-year anniversary of the Russian superstar scoring his 895th goal at the New York Islanders, breaking Wayne Gretzky's record that seemed unapproachable until Ovechkin came along.

Ovechkin has since scored 33 more goals, 31 this season, to get to 928 in the regular season. On March 22, he scored No. 1,000 total in the NHL, counting goals in the playoffs.

He also holds records for the most power play goals with 331, game-winning goals with 141 and shots with 7,091 — and counting. Not just an offensive powerhouse, the 6-foot-3 winger has been a physical force and ranks third on the career hits list with 3,871.

The Capitals visit longtime Ovechkin rival and fellow face of the sport Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday, then host them Sunday. The home finale in the nation's capital is sold out, with tickets going for way above face value in anticipation of it being the captain and franchise cornerstone's final game there.

They visit Columbus on Tuesday in what could be Ovechkin's final game in North America. He played his first career game in Washington against the Blue Jackets on Oct. 5, 2005.

Ovechkin, who is from Moscow, could opt to play one more season in the KHL, where he started as a professional when it was called the Russian Superleague. He played from 2001-05 and during the 2012-13 NHL lockout with Dynamo Moscow.

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EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) — Matthew Schaefer and Peter DeBoer have just spent one practice together, and the young face of the New York Islanders already understands a couple of very important things about one of the best defensive minds in hockey who just took over as the team's coach.

“I know he loves winning,” Schaefer said. “I know he knows how to coach a team."

DeBoer took the ice Monday with a daunting immediate task of trying to push the Islanders into the playoffs following the firing of Patrick Roy roughly 24 hours earlier. They may need to win all four games left to get in after losing their past four and seven of 10 to fall out of a spot, but the move to bring in an accomplished leader with a record of success is as much about the future as salvaging this season.

“This is not only about this year,” general manager Mathieu Darche said. “If it’s truly only about four games left when you don’t fully control your destiny, it’s not a desperate move about this year.”

No, it's more about jumping the line on other NHL teams to get one of the top coaching candidates available before they start making moves in the coming weeks. Los Angeles and Columbus currently have interim coaches, Toronto is looking for a new GM and could also change coaches — and that's just the beginning.

“Guys like Pete DeBoer don’t stay on the market very long,” Darche said. “At this time, I think it’s what we need moving forward. It’s like grabbing the No. 1 free agent on the market. Pete’s an outstanding coach.”

Taking responsibility for Roy's firing, which surprised them, players seemed to get the gist.

“Darchy, he saw us not playing well, he saw Pete being a really good coach and obviously it’s a long-term play with this organization where you get a great coach that has done a lot of good things in this league,” said veteran forward Brayden Schenn, who won the Stanley Cup in 2019 St. Louis after a midseason coaching change that happened much earlier. "It’s not just a four-game stint. I think these four games, we can use it to push ourselves to give us a chance to get in the playoffs and moving forward after that.”

DeBoer has taken a team to the third round in six of the past seven seasons: San Jose in 2019, Vegas in 2020 and ‘21 and Dallas in ’23, ‘24 and ’25. He has two trips to the Stanley Cup Final on his resume: New Jersey in ‘12 and San Jose in ’16.

Set to turn 58 on June 13, DeBoer almost certainly would have had options for next season and beyond. He could have waited to see what materialized, but after a whirlwind of conversations with Darche over the weekend he decided Long Island was the right fit.

“When I first picked up the phone, my initial reaction was probably exactly (that): ‘We’re two weeks away from offseason, what’s the rush?’” DeBoer said. "He sold me on the organization and the vision and the direction and their ownership. ... After speaking with him at length, this quickly became a priority for me.”

Coaching in the New York area from 2011-14 with the Devils and having familiar assistant Bob Boughner already on staff were factors. DeBoer joked that the easier travel compared to the Western Conference was a selling point, too.

And, of course, there is Schaefer, who at 18 is already among the sport's best defensemen, thriving at a position that usually has a steep learning curve.

“He's special,” said DeBoer, who watched Schaefer closely as an assistant on Canada's Olympic staff. “I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes the first half of the year, what I was seeing from an 18-year-old: the maturity in his game, how dynamic he was.”

DeBoer also called Ilya Sorokin one of the best goaltenders in the league. Sorokin's play largely kept the Islanders afloat through rough stretches, but even he could not save Roy's job.

“The last little bit here, we weren’t as sharp or we didn’t get away with as much as we did before because, let’s face it, we got away with some stuff during the year where our goaltender’s been outstanding,” Darche said.

After four losses in four games over a six-day span, Sorokin and his teammates don't play again until Thursday. That gives DeBoer a longer runway than most midseason replacements to tweak and adjust, but Darche cautioned there won't be a full-blown system change because there simply isn't time for that.

Time is running out to make the playoffs, but after spending the vast majority of a season out of the NHL for the first time in nearly two decades, DeBoer wants players to cherish being in the thick of a race down the stretch.

“(This is) a chance to be playing in the playoffs in less than two weeks, and don’t take that for granted,” DeBoer said. "You get in the grind of the wins and the losses and the travel. You sometimes forget about how exciting this time of year is in this kind of position.”

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