Red & Black Hockey
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Hedi retires with “almost” no regrets.
by David Lee on 09/16/09 at 11:02 PM ET
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Veteran defenseman Bret Hedican announced his overdue retirement today. The line in every article about this is that he has no regrets. In Raleigh, however, there’s a slightly different line in the story.
In the 17-year veteran’s prepared statement, he said: “I’m proud to have played this game for as long as I have and I’m leaving with no regrets.” There’s a similar line in an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune where he recalls NorthStars legend Curt Giles telling the rookie Hedican to cherish every moment of his career.
In Raleigh, however, the line is that Hedican’s one regret is that he didn’t retire as a Hurricane.
Hedican, who is old enough to be Rod Brind’Amour’s grandpa, played 369 of his 1039 regular season NHL games in a Hurricanes sweater. He also spent 310 games with the Canucks, 202 with the Panthers, 107 with the Blues and 51 last season with the Ducks. The silky-smooth skater also played in 108 career playoff games. He went to the Cup finals with Vancouver in 1994 and with Carolina in 2002. In 2006, he won the Cup with Carolina. On his day with the Cup, he took it to his hometown of North St. Paul, Minnesota.
Despite his accomplishments on the ice, he’s probably still the second most famous person in his house.
While he told the rest of the world that he had “no regrets” about his career, he told a different story to Luke Decock of the Raleigh News & Observer. He says he’d be willing to go to ridiculous extremes to be able to sign a one day contract and retire as a Hurricane.
The one thing I really am sad about is that I didn’t retire a Hurricane. I really wanted to. I wish it was possible to sign a one-day contract. I’d pay (general manager) Jimmy (Rutherford) to let me sign for a dollar and put the jersey on again.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rutherford and Hedican work something out. It seems like something Rutherford would do to show appreciation for Hedi.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m a huge fan of Hedican. Truth is, I never was. I thought he’d worn out his welcome after the Cup season, but he still had two years remaining on a big contract signed way back in 2002. He’d already had a number of surgeries and he added another hip surgery to the list. He only played in 50 games of the 2006-07 season, and by the end of it, I’d grown very tired of him. There was a misunderstanding about his contract which led a lot of people to think that the last season of his contract was an option. Conflicting reports in the summer of 2007 suggested that Hedican was either in the worst shape of his career or the best shape of his career. Conflicting reports suggested that he was either on the verge of retiring or that he was looking for a contract extension.
Hedican returned for one more season in Carolina, and it wasn’t very pretty. He was still the smooth-skating machine. He was still the TOI beast. He was a team-leading +17 that season. Those were the good things. However, he wasn’t as defensively sound as he once was. He was much softer. I wasn’t at all sad when his contract expired and he signed a one-year deal with the Ducks last summer. Carolina needed to get younger on the blue line, and that was one of two big steps.
Make no mistake. Hedi may not have been on my top ten list of favorite Hurricanes players, but I absolutely appreciate his service to the team and the community. He and Kristi were visible and valuable members of the Raleigh community. He was one of the faces of the franchise as it went through growing pains.
I still don’t understand why this retirement didn’t happen last summer, when Bret, Kristi and their children moved to California for Kristi’s family. He had the perfect opportunity to retire as a Hurricane, but opted to give it one more go.
At the end of the day, this discussion of “retiring as a Hurricane” doesn’t really matter. Ron Francis retired as a Leaf, but nobody will remember him that way. His legacy is his two Cups with the Pens and obviously his “eternal captain” status with the Canes. Hedican won’t be remembered as a Duck. He’ll be remembered as a Hurricane first and also as a Canuck.
Good luck to Bret in retirement!
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Tags: Bret+Hedican, Carolina+Hurricanes,
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About Red & Black Hockey
David Lee is a restaurant manager with an unused degree in political science. He can be found at Carolina Hurricanes games, Scrabble tournaments and indie-rock shows. Sometimes, all in the same day.
David has contributed to CBC.ca for their Stanley Cup playoff coverage in 2006 and to the New York Times Slapshot blog for theirs in 2008. Red and Black Hockey was founded in July of 2005.
Great skater!
Posted by Lindas1st from New England on 09/17/09 at 07:10 AM ET