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.