It seemed inevitable that Jason Spezza’s hockey trip would not end the day he decided to retire from the NHL.
He was the man his teammates once called “Bob Mackenzie” for his obsession with everything that happened in the league – every last goal, every transaction (big or small), every last player and potential. No one who knew Spezza well would be surprised to see him jump from a player who potentially ends up in the Hall of Fame to a special assistant to GM Kyle Dubas in the front office of Maple Leafs.
“He’s going to be GM as soon as he skates,” said Trevor Daly, a childhood friend, former teammate and longtime NHL opponent.
“He always knew everything about the league,” former Ottawa Senators teammate Eric Carlson said in an interview last year. looking and keeping up. “
Add Nick Foligno, who played with the Special in Toronto and Ottawa: “If you have a question, go to the Special for everything that happens in the league. I don’t know if he has scouts or just so many friends on other teams, but he just seemed to have the answers. “
Leafs announced Spezza’s retirement after 19 seasons in the NHL on Sunday. (John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
Some guys like hockey. Speca ate it. He fell asleep. She breathed it in. He was all-in, the best hockey maniac even at the end of his 20-year NHL career.
“He’s for life,” Foligno said. “I know he has daughters at home and I think he’s a great dad, but I’m sure the game will always be with him and he will want to be involved in some way.”
“He just has too much knowledge to offer. It would be a loss for a man like him not to want to be involved. “
And he will be like that.
Speza and Dubas have started discussions about what Spca’s career might look like after last summer’s game. These conversations resumed after the loss of Leafs in the playoffs by Lightning. Spezza will have the special role of assistant to “observe, study and take everything possible” from his place in the previous office next season.
The two sides will then re-evaluate and determine what is most attractive to Spec.
“Whether it’s scouting, whether it’s ultimately player development, coaching, salary ceiling stuff,” Dubas said, “we want to give him the next 13, 14 months to really understand and immerse yourself in all aspects (of the front office) and then determine what he is best at. ”
At this point, Speza is not sure which direction he wants to go in the end.
You can easily forget how big a star Speza was. He was selected number 2, who once destroyed the league on the best line in hockey: the almighty number 1 of the Ottawa Senators with the participation of Spezza along with Daniel Alfredson and Danny Heathley.
The famous Pizza Line propelled Sens until the Stanley Cup final in 2007. Speza called those days the “top” of his career as a player.
“It’s funny,” said former Senators teammate Chris Kelly. says to Spezz: “Hey, Spezz, can you give me a stick after the game?” It just shows the presence he had in the league at the time, that this man’s season is coming to an end and the main thing on his mind is to receive a stick with the signature of Jason Spca after the match. “
Spca plays with senators from 2002-2014 (Andre Ringet / NHLI via Getty Images)
Spezza was the maestro of the line. He was one of the best pitchers of his generation.
“I think every goal scorer will tell you they have a favorite,” Heathley said in an interview at one point. “They are all great players; I played with some amazing centerpieces. But he just knew where I would be. It was that (unspoken) chemistry, I don’t know how to describe it. What I loved to do, where I would be – (he knew). For example, there were certain times when I might hang out for a split second, just a split second longer, or jump to a hole a little faster, and he knew what I was thinking.
“The other thing I will say now that I think about it. What I really liked about him for me was the tempo of his passes. I mean, if I was 10 feet away, he would put it there on a T-shirt instead of me. But if it was cross ice, he would have screamed, because we had to beat the goalkeeper to the crossbar. “
Mike Fisher, another former Ottawa teammate, added: “The thing about Spez is that he has a good shot, an underrated shot, I thought. And he could use it to trick defenders and make games. He just had this vision, this ability to find boys – to know where the boys were, without even having to search, it seemed. Everyone, including me, envied the way he passed the puck. “
Spca finished his career with five points less than 1000 – ranked 94th in NHL history. Adjusted for the era, Spezza moved to the 80’s.
Only 79 players collected more than his 632 assists.
Reduce it to the era in which he played, and Spca had more points than all but 10 players: Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Joe Thornton, Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Anse Kopitar, Eric Staal, Ryan Getzlaff, Nick Baxtrom and Henrik Sedin.
Speca ranked sixth in the Hart Trophy (2012). During his best years in Ottawa, he definitely ranked among the best players in the game and had to have a meaningful conversation at some point about a place in the Hall of Fame.
Stanley’s cup eventually escaped him.
“There is definitely a huge void in my heart and in my career without being able to win it,” Speca said. “Hockey is a job of my life and it is difficult not to be a champion in it. But I think it will help me orient myself and want to stay in the game. “
The specialist was ready to do everything possible to win the cup as a player.
After five seasons in Dallas, he arrived in Toronto, open to play any role that the Leafs asked of him in the pursuit of that championship. Leafs head coach at the time Mike Babcock did not believe that Speza would really do it; that the experienced former All Star would suddenly want to confuse him as the center of the fourth line.
“There’s a role for him here, but he needs to be able to do it,” Babcock said during a training camp that year. “And so we’ll see during the show if he likes it, if he wants to do it.”
Spezza was inexplicably scratched in what would be his first game as Leaf on his first night against his old Ottawa team.
Speza accepted him calmly. He did not complain. Don’t fret. And it wasn’t long before he made it clear that he would not only do the role, but he would do well.
In his first two seasons with the Leafs, Spezza scored 55 points in 112 games, playing just 11 minutes a night. He took almost nothing to chase the cup with the team of his hometown. He was an ace in the killing spree, playing the role of FOGO (faceoff, mallow) even in the criminal murder and quarterback of the second power play unit.
His fake slap was still misleading the guys.
More than the contribution of the ice was the intangible things he took the Leaves out of the ice. This is what led the Leafs to bring Spezza on board in the first place. Dubas wanted someone around to advise the talented young stars of the team, to point them in the right direction. He needed someone he could trust to do.
“It is really difficult to present in the right context or in words the impact it has on our facility and on our program every day, the level of care and passion it feels, not only in the game of hockey, but also in really helping every member of the team, every player, everyone who really needed any help – out of season, at any time of the day, “said Dubas.” Every time he was a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs as a player, he was quite remarkable.
Speza was the leader who did not carry a letter.
Dubas remembered jumping around the dining room the day after the Leafs played poorly at Buffalo during his first season with the team. He seemed intent on elevating every player, especially the young ones.
Spca was a source of knowledge, ready and willing to give guidance, answer questions or tell stories to anyone who asked. Some teammates bombarded him with questions about his glory days, how difficult it was to reach the Cup final.
They called it Vintage. They called it Spez. They adored him.
“We go to dinner and stuff all the way,” William Nilander said at one point. “He has some good stories and it’s always a great time. And you know how good a hockey player he is. He teaches us a lot of things, just things to keep in mind when we play. ”
Austin Matthews loved to talk about sticks with Speza, who was known to be obsessed with every detail of his equipment, especially the sticks.
Speca and Auston Matthews. (Richard Lotens / Toronto Starr via Getty Images)
However, Spezza did not only advise the stars. It seemed that every player, even promising or extreme players who drank only a cup of coffee in the NHL, had a brilliant story about his interaction with Spez.
Dubas saw this first hand during informal summer skating as Spezza warmed up for ECHL players. “He doesn’t treat anyone differently and he was willing to do whatever he could to help them,” Dubas said.
In Ottawa, Spca saw boys like Alfredson, Dominic Hasek and Wade Redon take care of their younger teammates. He wanted to do the same, to pass on what he knew to the next generation.
That wasn’t the case for Toronto either. This was Spezza throughout his NHL career.
“He is certainly one of the best teammates I’ve played with, so far …
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