Washington Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan didn't completely shut the door Tuesday when asked about the potential of trading the face of his franchise, Alex Ovechkin.

MacLellan said he's not ready to trade him, but "maybe" if a hockey deal came about, according to Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post.

The unofficial definition of a "hockey deal" is a straight up player(s)-for-player(s) deal to make both teams better immediately, in each GMs respective opinion. The Ryan Johansen for Seth Jones blockbuster is a great example.

What a hockey deal isn't is a salary cap dump, or dealing a star player away for an abundance of prospects.

Here is the full statement from MacLellan:

People are looking for a major solution to what we have going on. I think part of it is they watch certain things in (Ovechkin's) game and then it shows up and they say, 'That's not acceptable.' But he's a big part of our franchise, a big part of our history. He's been a big part of where we're at as an organization and just to casually say, 'Let's trade him for what for who?' I don't think it makes sense from an organizational point of view. Maybe at some point if there's a legitimate hockey deal that came available, but I don't know that that's where we're at right now. I just think he's got a history here, he's a big part of this franchise and he'll continue to be going forward.

Ovechkin has taken plenty of criticism for his team's playoff woes as the Capitals have failed to advance past the second round of the playoffs in the Ovechkin era, despite taking home the Presidents' Trophy in each of the past two seasons.

To make matters worse, their seasons have ended at the hands of Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in consecutive years. This year's ending was more bitter than most considering Pittsburgh was without star defenseman Kris Letang, starting goalie Matt Murray, and the fact that Washington has multiple pending free agents.

The talk of trading Ovechkin comes in the wake of one of his worst seasons, scoring just 33 goals and recording 69 points.

Ovechkin has a cap hit of $9,538,462 through 2020-21, or his age 34 season, a lot of money for someone MacLellan intimated has become a one-dimensional player, primarily due to his lack of footspeed.

"The game's getting faster. He's going to have to train in a different way - a more speed way instead of a power way," he told Whyno. "He's going to have to think of ways he can evolve into a player that still has a major impact on the game."

Ovechkin is listed at 239 pounds, one of the NHL's heaviest for an offensive-minded player.

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