After 17 seasons, 1,051 regular-season games and a Stanley Cup championship, Kyle Okposo is retiring from professional hockey, he announced Thursday in a letter released by his agency.
Okposo, 36, ended his career on a high note last season when he won his first Stanley Cup as a member of the Florida Panthers. After playing parts of eight seasons with the Buffalo Sabers and spending a season and a half as the team’s captain, Okposo asked to be traded at the NHL trade deadline knowing he was nearing the end of his career. He told Sabers general manager Kevyn Adams that the Florida Panthers were his preferred destination, and he got his wish.
Okposo played in 17 playoff games with zero goals and two assists with the Panthers, but teammates praised his defensive play and leadership. He missed the playoffs in each of the seven full seasons he played in Buffalo and only made the playoffs three times in his nine seasons with the New York Islanders, so Okposo appreciated every second of the championship run. After captain Aleksander Barkov and veteran goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, Okposo was the third Panther to receive his lap with the Stanley Cup.
“You put 30 years into this basically to try to raise that trophy,” Okposo said on NHL Network after that moment. “All the hard work, all the skates, everything. It’s pretty special to do it.”
In his letter, Okposo, a native Minnesotan, said he looks forward to “continuing to contribute to the game,” which will come as no surprise to anyone who has been around him during his career. During the NHL playoffs, he told The AthleticsMichael Russo, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I have some things that have come to me over the past, I would say, year and a half that I’ve been thinking about doing. It’s going to be really hard for me to stay away from the game just because I love it a lot.”
An open letter from Kyle Okposo. pic.twitter.com/wb5UC6yL4l
— CAA Hockey (@CAAHockey) September 19, 2024
The number 7 pick in the 2006 NHL Draft, Okposo scored 242 goals and had 614 career points. But his contribution to his teams and the league extends beyond what he did on the ice. He was an active member of the NHLPA as a player representative and as one of the members of the hiring committee when the players’ association hired Marty Walsh as its new executive director. As a team captain in Buffalo, Okposo was a valuable voice for Adams as he tried to rebuild a young Sabers roster. His experiences on and off the ice could open up opportunities working for a team, the league or the players’ association.
But as he also noted in his letter, he is looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Danielle, and their four young children.
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(Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty)
