ONE LAST SKATE

Teammates remember

Jason Spezza smiled when the subject of Daniel Alfredsson was raised.

The centreman with the Dallas Stars, having spent 11 seasons with the Ottawa Senators, didn’t hesitate to say he was happy to see the repaired relationship between his old team and his old teammate.

His smile grew even wider when it was mentioned that Alfredsson, the 17-year Senator before a one-season dalliance with the Detroit Red Wings, will join Ottawa on the ice for pregame warm-ups on Thursday night, when the franchise’s bestever player is to be honoured before a game against the New York Islanders.

“If he was out in warm-ups and I was playing with him, I would probably try to convince him to stick around,” Spezza said, then broke out laughing. “But, yeah, I’ll definitely be watching for sure from afar.”

Spezza, who knows something about leaving the nation’s capital after a long stint, said he didn’t imagine the circumstances of Alfredsson’s departure would leave a lasting scar. (The 41-yearold Swede played his last season in Ottawa, then left for Detroit either because Senators owner Eugene Melnyk wouldn’t pay him enough, or because he wouldn’t pay other players enough to improve the roster.)

“I always felt he was going to reconcile with the organization,” said Spezza.

He was in Toronto on Tuesday for a game against his hometown Maple Leafs. “Little bit of water under the bridge and time heals all wounds.”

Yes, and absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

“How things ended, I think he felt it was a move that was necessary, and I think the right move for him, but now that he’s decided to hang things up, it’s good that Ottawa has welcomed him back.

“There’s not a lot of tradition, yet, in that city and he was really the first big player to play his whole career there,” Spezza said. It was quite the career. More than 1,200 games, more than 1,100 points, a tidy 444 goals, and, perhaps most importantly, one of the few Swedes who between them have forever shattered the myth of their countrymen as players who are unwilling to play a physical game.

In the 2002 playoffs against the Maple Leafs, back when both teams were good enough to wage something called the Battle Of Ontario — in the post-season! — Alfredsson famously drilled noted Leafs pest Darcy Tucker into the boards from behind, then looped back toward the net to score a game-winning goal, having somewhat miraculously avoided a penalty.

“Quite frankly, I’m full of anger,” said then-Leafs coach Pat Quinn after the game.

Asked if he was surprised that the hit came from Alfredsson, Quinn said no, then paused for five seconds that seemed like an eternity in which he was probably calculating potential league fines for intemperate speech.

“He’s been pretty active against us,” the coach said, which was an impressive thing to say while chewing off one’s own tongue.

In those years, when the somnambulant Air Canada Centre crowd could barely be raised from its stupor save by a goal or a fight, the sight of Ottawa’s number 11 touching the puck, his golden hair flowing out from under his helmet, was enough to send the Toronto crowd into a fit of lusty boos.

People would scream that Alfredsson sucked. They told him to get a haircut.

They would call him a chicken Swede, even though they knew it wasn’t true.

No one in Toronto ever called him Alfie, because nicknames were something you used for people you liked. He was a dirty player to those in Toronto but, if wearing the blue and white, there would have been sonnets to his grit and his sandpaper.

The Leafs, weirdly, had the upper hand in those playoff years, even though Ottawa was generally the better team.

And, post-2004 lockout, when the Sens were still making the playoffs and the Leafs were not, Ottawa made it further than Toronto had in ages, getting to the 2006-07 Stanley Cup final on the back of a series-clinching goal against Buffalo by, naturally, Alfredsson.

He never won that Cup, which as much as anything sparked the last-ditch effort with Detroit. But he did manage an Olympic gold in 2006, part of an absurdly stacked lineup that included Peter Forsberg, Mats Sundin, Henrik Zetterberg, Henrik Lundqvist and the Sedin twins. Not a bad consolation prize.

It is, as Spezza says, fitting that Alfredsson would announce his retirement back in Ottawa. He is the unquestioned face of the reborn franchise, and its fans should revel in a proper sendoff.

When Sundin came back to say farewell to Toronto, no one gave a whit about his year in Vancouver.

They didn’t win it all, but those Senators teams, with Daniel Alfredsson as leader, were good. Good enough to be hated.

Spezza spoke on Tuesday about the years he spent working the power play with his old captain. “Yeah, we knew each other pretty well back then,” he said.

“Opponents would shade you one way and the other guy could sense it right away and get the puck to you in the right spot.

“It was almost second nature,” Spezza said, a little wistful now. “We had it, and it was definitely a special time.”