Former Captain Of The Winnipeg Jets And 1000-Game Veteran Announces His Plans To Retire
Blake Wheeler was once the captain of the Winnipeg Jets before later joining the Rangers, and he has announced he plans to retire on a podcast.
Long-time Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler announced his retirement from the National Hockey League, he said in an appearance on the 'Beyond High Performance' podcast.
The decision comes off the back of a frustrating year in which a leg injury limited him to just 54 games with the New York Rangers last season, after an emotional contract buyout from the Jets last offseason.
«My body, can I still go play a hockey game? Hell, yeah. I can still play,» Wheeler said. «It's just the emotional, get up 82 times - I don't want to do that. There's only so much gas in the tank for that.»
Blake Wheeler, 38, said he'd decided the mental toll of the ups and downs in hockey outweighs the appeal.
With a personality reportedly as complex off the ice as he was intense on, Wheeler freely admitted an emotional nature that sometimes put him at odds with the Winnipeg media factored into the kind of captain he'd become.
«As an emotional person, that was my battery every game. Tapping into the emotion,» Wheeler said. «What was really challenging for me as a leader was after the game, you've got to dial that down and talk to the media in a way that's respectful. And I'm like a 10 out of 10 on the emotion scale for the last three hours. I can't get there.»
Wheeler retired after a prolific 15-year NHL career in which he scored 321 goals and 943 points in 1,172 games for the Boston Bruins, Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets, and New York Rangers.
He was sort of a prototype modern power forward: big and skilled, a guy capable of driving the net who could also have dexterity in tight quarters.
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