Daniel Alfredsson ended his career in 2014.
But it was close that the skates were put on the shelf eight (!) Years earlier.
But when he saw a teammate’s old skates, everything changed.
Daniel Alfredsson is one of Sweden’s greatest players of all time, and his incredible track record speaks for itself. His NHL career stretched from 1995 all the way to 2014, and in total it was an incomparable 18 seasons in the world’s best league, where in 1,246 games he accounted for 1,157 points.
Coincidence that saved his career
But his career could have been really shorter, and it was actually just a match away from the skates being hung on the shelf already in 2006. Daniel Alfredsson then felt that he was in the worst shape of his life, and he could not understand why. He was desperate for answers and solutions, when he suddenly saw teammate Chris Kelly’s skates hanging in the locker room.
Alfredsson has in interviews afterwards said that the skates saved his career. He had given himself one last match to get his form in order, and otherwise he was determined to step into the boss’s office the next day, and announce that his career was over. Daniel Alfredsson was special in a way, next to the ice – and it was just about skates. He could use over 30 different skates in one season, and once he had tried Kelly’s old skates, he found the solution.
Continued for seven years
The skates were a slap in the face, and the solution was simply that Kelly, about every other week, had to order new skates, and two weeks later, when they had settled down properly, the grills were handed over to Alfredsson. And after getting the trick, Alfredsson flew forward again. He scored in the first four games with the trick, and in the playoffs he carried his Ottawa Senators all the way to the Stanley Cup final.
For Chris Kelly, who did not have the same status as Alfredsson, it was a dream situation.
– It made me stay a few more years. They could not get rid of me – Alfie needed her skates, he said.
Once Kelly was traded to Boston, Alfredsson, according to Kelly himself, was crushed.
– Our general manager even tried to write in the contract that I had to send my skates to Ottawa every other week…, he has said.
After that day, when Alfredsson was just one game away from quitting completely, there were another 530 games in the NHL, where he accounted for a total of 181 goals and 299 assists. All thanks to a pair of old skates…
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