Who's retiring? Well, we know who should call it quits
Who's retiring?
With a little over a month remaining before training camps open, with players starting to ratchet off their offseason training in the era when painting the barn no longer is the regimen, those are among the questions still floating around.
As Ducks general manager Brian Burke waits for the official word from Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne, he hopes the word isn't "retired" -- unless it's Selanne passing along the news during the small-talk portion of a conversation that he just replaced all four tires on one of his sports cars.
There are several others at different sorts of crossroads, and that mainly involves being realistic enough to accept the lack of interest in them as unrestricted free agents as the true measure of their worth and capability in 2007.
These guys should retire, and retire for good, before they're subjected to (or subject themselves to) the ignominy of sitting around for six months and then making the announcement as we all react with: "I thought he already had retired."
Eric Lindros
He is embroiled in Players' Association politics and the search for a new executive director, which should raise eyebrows, and remains without a contract for next season.
Quit, Eric, quit.
Last season, I both thought and hoped he might have landed in a mutually beneficial situation in Dallas. Once concussions are a problem, they're always a potential problem, so he always was one hit away from another one, whether career-ending or simply one more.
But the fact is, and this is more important than whether cobwebs were showing up, as the season went along, he didn't show any signs that he was passionately grateful for the conditional opportunity the Stars were giving him, and the faith that it represented.
He dogged it, both off and on the ice, and now any team would have to be nuts to give him a chance. He can say all he wants about rediscovering -- or, some would say, discover it, period -- that passion, but he had his chance last season and didn't take advantage of it. This has been a star-crossed career and, no matter what happens, it will be summarized as potential largely unrealized for reasons both beyond and within his control.
Jeremy Roenick
Stop backtracking. Just quit. Cleanly. Unequivocally. Take Brett Hull's TV seat.
Roenick has been a breath of fresh -- and occasional hot -- air at times. In either case, it usually has been good for a game that needs to take leashes off its players and also erode the culture that sometimes makes such candor so unacceptable, nobody even has to mandate it.
He also has been a shining light for USA Hockey and American hockey, which are not always the same things.
Patrice Brisebois
The news that the Canadiens, who declined to exercise his option two years ago, have offered him a one-year deal (albeit at a "bargain" rate of $700,000) is stunning. Brisebois, 36, is coming off back surgery and, more significantly, a two-year, $4.5-million deal with Colorado that turned out to be a disaster for the Avalanche. The same thing happened as happened at Montreal: His error-prone ways made teammates, fans and other observers prone to point the finger at him, even when he didn't necessarily deserve it.
The way to go out is not to return to his hometown and have his final season turn into a bitter twilight year of even more acrimony than he faced in the final days of his previous stint with the Canadiens. It got ugly then, and it could be worse this season. Does Brisebois need that? Does his family? What's GM Bob Gainey thinking?
Brisebois has made stunningly good money, and the headaches continuing to play will bring wouldn't be worth it -- for everyone involved.
Pierre Turgeon
I only throw this one out because he hasn't "officially" retired … just effectively, pending an announcement soon.
Michael Peca
Yes, I know he still can be an effective role player, but at nowhere near the level that made a lot of us think he was something better than an effective role player. The Leafs' inertia and/or complete lack of interest should be eloquent testimony that at 33, he is too banged up. A return to the Sabres? Perhaps that's more palatable, but if the wake of the Chris Drury and Daniel Briere departures, he certainly would be asked to do "too much," and it would be a sour experience.
And here's the gray-area one:
Peter Forsberg
He's still trying to assess his foot issues and whether he wants to, and can, play at a level that won't embarrass him. If anybody could pull off a Roger Clemens-type act -- take the first part of the season off, rejoin the league after Christmas and get into high gear -- he can. (In fact, he already has.)
But it could get downright silly if daily monitoring of Foppa's Future becomes part of NHL coverage in several markets (not Nashville, because the Predators' stripping down likely will lessen the already long-shot chances of his considering a return) and certainly in Aftonbladet or Expressen.
As soon as he knows, he should say whether he wants to play, or not.
Terry Frei is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He is the author of "Third Down and a War to Go" and the upcoming "'77."
