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Play If You Can
by Paul on 08/01/08 at 07:23 PM ET
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from the CP,
Steve Yzerman and Joe Nieuwendyk were forced into retirement by injuries and never really had to wrestle with the decision about when to call it a career.
So when they see players like Mats Sundin or Joe Sakic struggling to make up their minds, they have one simple piece of advice.
“If there’s any doubt and guys aren’t sure, I think they should be playing,” Yzerman told The Canadian Press on Friday. “You can be retired for the rest of your life. You’ll know when you’re done.
“If you’re not 100 per cent certain that you don’t want to play anymore, then the decision is that you should be playing.”
Added Nieuwendyk: “People always told me: ‘Play as long as you can.’ I think these guys you’re talking about still have some good years left in them.”
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The NHL should institute some kind of rule where a player has to decide about retirement before, say, training camp (or, maybe the third week of the season, or something), so we don’t have this Niedermeyer and Selanne fiasco. It’s not fair to their potential teammates, some of whom would go right ahead and play the 82 game schedule (or as close as they can), instead of joining the team in February and just want to be in it for a Cup run.
I think Stevie Y’s and Niedermeyer’s comments referred to playing as long as you can, as in playing the season with your teammates, not swooping in around springtime as the savior.
As a hockey fan, I’m glad that experiment didn’t work, and the Stars bounced the Ducks in round 1.
(also glad that the Wings’s experience, skill, speed, heart, and tenacity beat the Pens’s skill, speed, and heart)
FWIW, I don’t like football very much at all, but coming from Detroit, I respected the hell out of Brett Favre. Notice teh past tense “respected”. Enough already.
Posted by Steve Harken from San Franciscco (by way of Detroit) on 08/05/08 at 06:46 AM ET