Sakic doesn’t regret retirement, with one brief exception

You have to wonder what a person does after two Stanley Cups and 1,641 career points over roughly two decades of NHL hockey.

“My life these days is just driving my kids everywhere. That’s all I do,” Sakic said in a Denver Post report. “Or, I’m doing what Debbie (his wife) says. She’s the boss. But you know what? I love it. When I retired, I was ready. I’m lucky. I never had any doubts, like a lot of players do.”

It probably helps when you retire without a lot of unfinished business. Sakic left the game as one of the best that ever played. He’s won gold medals at the 1988 World Junior Championships, 1994 World Championships, 2002 Winter Olympics, 2004 World Cup, in addition to the times he raised the Stanley Cup.

If you want to talk about individual achievements, his career is full of them and we have already highlighted 19 of the most memorable ones.

Still, there was one day that Sakic wished he could end his retirement, if only momentarily — and it wasn’t for an NHL contest. It was during the 2010 Winter Olympics’ gold medal game between Team USA and Canada.

“We had second-row seats. I remember watching Chris Drury skating around in front of me for the U.S., because we were down at their end. I turned to my wife and said ‘Oh, I wish I were out there right now,’ ” Sakic recalled. “But I also knew that I wouldn’t have been able to play at the level I wanted, so it wasn’t so bad.”

That game featured a dramatic comeback by Team USA to force overtime and, of course, a winner by Sidney Crosby that gave Canada their first Olympic gold medal since the 2002 team that Sakic was on. Games like that can be used as evidence to show that hockey is still exciting, inspiring, and above all entertaining, even though all-time greats like Sakic have played in their last contest.