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 Sabres and spending a season and a half as the team’s captain, Okposo asked to be traded at the NHL trading deadline knowing he was closing in on the end of his career. He told Sabres 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 goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, Okposo was the third Panther to get his lap with the Stanley Cup.
“You put 30 years into this basically to try to hoist that trophy,” Okposo said on NHL Network after that moment. “All the hard work, all the skates, everything. It’s pretty special to get it done.”
In his letter, Okposo, a native Minnesotan, said he’s looking forward to “continuing to contribute to the game,” which won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been around him during his career. During the NHL playoffs, he told The Athletic’s Michael Russo, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I have got a number of things that have come my way over the past, I’d say, year and a half that I would consider doing. It’s going to be really hard for me to stay away from the game just because I do love it so much.”
An open letter from Kyle Okposo. pic.twitter.com/wb5UC6yL4l
— CAA Hockey (@CAAHockey) September 19, 2024
The No. 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 attempted to rebuild a young Sabres 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’s looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Danielle, and their four young children.
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty)
