Kyle Okposo officially retires as a Stanley Cup champion
What a way to go out! Outstanding career!
Longtime NHL veteran Kyle Okposo has officially announced his retirement from professional hockey today.
Okposo made the announcement through CAA his representation.
The 36 year old retires just months after hoisting the Stanley Cup as a member of the Florida Panthers, a team that he played just 22 games with total. He's, of course, more remembered from his time with the Bufffalo Sabres and the New York Islanders. In total he managed 242 goals and 614 points in 1051 career regular season games.
Read below for our earlier offseason report on Okposo and his day with the Stanley Cup.
Man it is tough not to feel bad for Kyle Okposo and the many fans who were effectively screwed over by forces entirely outside of their control on Friday.
Okposo has been waiting for years to have his day with hockey's version of the holy grail and after finally capturing a Stanley Cup championship as a member of the Florida Panthers this year, Okposo was finally set to get his special day. That day should have been Friday with a special event planned in the state of Minnesota, Okposo's home state, but unfortunately for Okposo and his fans the event was forced to be cancelled through no fault of his own.
Minnesota Wild insider Mike Russo reported on Friday that Okposo was forced to cancel the event after a global IT outage prevented the Cup from traveling from St. Louis, where the Cup had been on Thursday due to Matthew Tkachuk's own day with the Stanley Cup, to Minnesota as was originally planned.
The cancelation came on extremely short notice, leaving some fans who had traveled hours to see the Cup extremely disappointed.
That is nothing short of terrible for both Okposo and his fans but unfortunately there was little that could be done about a major outage that was impacting airlines all across the world. Thankfully Okposo would eventually get his hands on the Cup and did share it with people in his home state, but it didn't get to go off the way he had planned it all out.
