Ovechkin Opens Up About Capitals Missing Playoffs: 'It's Hard... Playing For Nothing'

For the first time in nine years, Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin will have an extended offseason with his team eliminated from playoff contention -- and it stings.

The 37-year-old spoke with reporters in Montreal to discuss where the team stands as they play the Canadiens in one of their final five games of the season.

"Physically, I feel the same, but mentally, when you're not making playoffs, it's kinda hard," he admitted. "Those five games is gonna be hard mentally because you basically playing for nothing. You know, but we all professionals, we all understand we still have to play for fans and for you so you can write something."

Ovechkin said he felt that the Capitals did a good job staying in the fight late, and rather than citing the inconsistencies down the stretch, he explained that the rough start to the 2022-23 campaign made the hole harder to climb out of, even though the team was momentarily back in position after a red-hot December.

"Sometimes just the situation when we win the couple games and other teams win a couple games and that kind of put a space between teams," Ovechkin said, adding, "I'm always saying like at the end of the year, just first 10 games, you have to collect as many points as you can for this situation, what happened end of the year, so you don't have to catch someone to make the playoffs."

The Russian did say that having a longer summer and more time to rest, while the organization will also have time to evaluate where things stand and retool, is a positive. However, it's not what the group necessarily wanted or hoped for, and the only thing to do now is to come back stronger.

"You want that break to be as short as possible. Right now we're going to have lots of time to think about, lots of time to get ready for the year," Ovechkin said. "Hope everybody's gonna get healthy, hope everybody's gonna be on same page and we gonna be better next year."