First Danny Briere and now Simon Gagne.
In less than a month, two of the classiest, pure gentlemen of the game, have retired from hockey and both proudly wore the orange 'n black.
There are idiosyncrasies about every player you come in contact with. Throughout his entire career, even outside the Flyers, Gagne had certain catch-all phrases.
Whenever you asked him how things were at home or how he felt his play was, his favorite expression in response was, "it's all the time good."
The Philadelphia writers spoke to Gagne via conference call on Tuesday.
Here's some of his comments. (Transcript courtesy of the Flyers):
On his first NHL training camp in 1998 “If I go back when I got drafted in 1998, even before I went to training camp I had a good talk with Bobby Clarke. In my mind I knew that now, what the Flyers like to do with their young guys, was to send them back in juniors for one more year, and focusing on their second training camp. I was not really disappointed because I knew that and I came at the camp at in Voorhees and had a good summer there with Jimmy with the young guys, and everybody knew that we were just coming in for the rookie camp and after that I was getting sent back to juniors. In my mind, I knew the first step was good to get drafted in the first round by the Flyers but I don’t think I was ready enough mentally and physically to drop right away at 18 years old. The best thing for me [was] going to juniors and having a real good season and reaching 50 goals and 120 points, something like that. Represented my country at the World Juniors. I think in my mind, having the confidence knowing that the NHL was not too far. I had a real good tournament over there. I think I finished first in goals over there scoring seven goals or something like that. I think it was really good for me to go back and getting more confident and getting bigger and stronger. At 19 years old, they told me that they were giving me my shot by putting me with really good players. I’m never going to want to change anything that happened like that. I think it was the best environment for me.… What do you plan to do and do you plan to stay in hockey? “Right now what I told the people here this morning, the focus now is to spend more time with the family. I have three kids now, the last one is 4 months old. Three kids is definitely taking a lot of time. I’ll help my wife for the next couple months at least. My son started to play hockey two years ago so I’ll jump in and try to help him on that. Just be around them a little bit more. That’s going to be my main focus for the next couple months. After that I don’t know, I’ll sit back and see what is offered to me. Definitely, I would like to be involved in hockey. It doesn't matter what position or whatever. I did do some TV a couple years ago, something that I would like to go back and do. Watching games, doing some comments between periods and stuff like that. After games and post games, that was a great experience. Now doing that is forcing me to still be involved in the game, watching the game, knowing what’s going on, following teams and players around the league. Now if you get a call from a team that’s got a job open that would be interesting for me to do to still be involved in the game and know what’s going on even if you're not playing.… Where are you living? “In Quebec City right now… Is that where home is? “Yep… On his second departure from the Flyers “You can understand at times when you’re getting older that hockey is a business. I think there will be more and more of that when you see it just when it happened to me it was almost the start of it. Now I understand that it’s going to happen a lot more. It was a tough day. I’m not going to lie to you, it was definitely a bad memory with the Flyers that I would like to forget, but it’s there. At the same time, time heals and what happened with my dad last year and what the Flyers did after that I had a good talk with Paul Holmgren. There are definitely more important things in life than hockey and that was one of them that you realize hockey is a business and it’s nothing against Paul Holmgren. I’m always going to be a Flyer for the rest of my life and I want to be a part of that future. It was just a tough day to swallow at that time.… What did the Flyers do for your father, and did you look to come back? “Not really. If I got back to the last game I played in Boston, I don’t know exactly the day, but I know it was early December. I knew in my mind that it was going to be my last game. I knew it was my last game with the Boston Bruins, but pretty much the end of my career at that point. Knowing what was ahead with my father, talking to the doctor, they were pretty much sure that there was nothing to do at the end and it was just a question of time; maybe a month or two for my dad to pass away. So that was tough to swallow and at that time I knew that if I was going to go back here and stay with my father the rest of the time to missing two months after missing a year before that was pretty much impossible to do to go back and play for Boston again. I knew doing that was pretty much the end of it. At the same time, I was okay with the decision and that was the right move to do. I was really happy that I was able to stay right to the end with my father and that was something I will remember the rest of my life.… You had said that the Flyers did something for your father. Did they just show up? What did they do that really impressed you that helped you get over that? “I had many calls from people from the organization. Holmgren was there to call me and left me a message. At the time of the flowers, at one point I was almost going to call them back and say ‘that’s enough’ there were so many flowers. Just showed the class of the organization. I know Clarke was really close with my dad. When he was coming in town he was asking about my dad. Everyone from the organization, to the people working the building and stuff like that just brought me so many memories that even that day was not big enough to erase all those good memories. That’s what I mean by that. Forsberg and Knuble, best line ever played with? “Oh yeah, definitely the best line I ever played on. If you look at the numbers, the numbers don’t lie. I think at that point when I got the call in the summer from Clarke told me ‘I’ve got some news for you, I just signed you a centerman, it’s Peter Forsberg and you’re going to play with him.’ At that point I knew that my career was going to change. I had a good season before that, but I had a different role. At that point I knew that I was going to be a top left winger playing with a player like that. I knew that I was just going to have to show up to camp in good shape and in good mind and it clicked right away. Sometimes you could play with the best player in the world and it doesn't click. This is almost like it was meant to be and it was a perfect mix for that line. The other thing too, not only on the ice but off the ice those two guys are good friends of mine now. They are always going to be really close to my heart.… Overtime in goal in Boston and winning the cup in Los Angeles are your career highlights? “Yeah, I think so. If I go back I have so many good memories with the good memories with the Flyers. We are always bringing back the bad ones, but there are too many good memories in Philly it’s tough to remember telling you all of them. Definitely the playoffs in 2010. The way things happened, breaking my foot and coming back for Game 4 and scoring the overtime goal, and after that slowly coming back in that series. Able to go in Boston and go down [3-0] in that game 7 and coming back and scoring that power play goal. It was a team effort. Not because I scored the game winner that we won the game, because it was a team effort. That year was really special, just too bad at the end I think we were a little bit out of gas and a couple guys were injured. Definitely one of my best moments with the Flyers. After that, going to LA and winning the Cup. It is a dream of all the hockey players that play in the National Hockey League. When you take that Cup, it’s all the sacrifice you did when you were younger, what your parents did. All the buses, the injuries you had to go through, all the up and downs and all the hard times. This is the best feeling in the world. The other one too, the 2002 gold medal with team Canada was definitely the top moment in my career.… Where does that rank, the gold medal and why for you? Another thing I wanted to ask about that, you and JR [Jeremy Roenick], I don’t know if you remember this, were you and JR were skating in the warm-up and you caught each other’s eyes and had a smile. I don’t know if you remember that, and why you smiled at each other. “We were teammates and JR was my centerman. Almost like a big brother to me. So it was really special facing each other for the gold medal. I know how big it was for them, for team USA to go into the finals in the United States. I was that young kid, 21 years old, playing against those guys and playing against those big stars too on my team. It’s always special to play against one of your teammates, especially with a guy who played on your line. That was pretty much it in the warm-up. After the game, I know he was really disappointed but he was really happy for me when we shook our hands at the end when we won the gold medal." *
For more Flyers from training camp, check out CSNPhilly.com: