He could be luxuriating in his retirement. So it says something that Spezza is playing his third straight year as a Leaf for the league-minimum wage, which runs $750,000 this season. If it’s not work to him, it’s certainly been a good gig – lucrative enough for Spezza to pile up an estimated $89 million (U.S.) in career earnings. I think it’s just I enjoy what I’m doing, and it’s not work for me.” It’s a hard league to stay in for a long time, so obviously I’m proud of playing that long,” Spezza said. “Every hundred (games) is kind of celebrated amongst players. He said reaching milestones like the 1,200-game mark aren’t cause for much reflection on his part, but “they definitely mean something.”
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But the second-overall pick in the 2001 draft isn’t the kind to linger on the negative, or to over-analyze his situation. And heck, Spezza would be playing in his 20th NHL season, and likely well past the 1,200-game mark, if not for the lockouts that robbed hockey lovers of the entire 2004-05 campaign and a good chunk of 2012-13. There was the moment in 2019 when Leafs coach Mike Babcock scratched Spezza in what would have been Spezza’s Leafs debut, just because Babcock could. But it’s not as though there haven’t been moments where hockey’s ugly side has done its best to suck the joy out of Spezza’s being. Lately it’s been easy to come to the rink with a smile on one’s face in Leafland, where the road-triping NHLers came into Sunday having won 13 of their most recent 15 games. And for Spezz to be on Game 1,200 and having the same mindset - it’s crazy, and just something we can learn from.” “Sometimes you forget about how much fun (hockey) is. “You’d think it was game one tomorrow for him by how excited he is every single day,” Jack Campbell, the Leafs goaltender, was saying of Spezza this week. As much as Spezza once turned heads for his prodigious talent with the puck – and as much as he reminded everyone of his enduring ability to conjure flashes of magic rifling a top-shelf slapshot for his fourth goal of the season the other night in Los Angeles - Spezza now more often wows those around him with his obvious affection for his craft.
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All these years later, he’s a fourth-line bit player averaging about 12 minutes a night for the Maple Leafs.īut as Spezza prepared to play his 1,200th NHL game on Sunday evening against the Ducks at the Honda Center, his Toronto teammates and coach pointed to the constant that’s allowed Spezza to remain a relevant contributor, both on and off the ice, at age 38. In his prime he was a first-line all-star who’s counted himself among the league’s top handful of point producers. ANAHEIM In 19 seasons as an NHL regular, Jason Spezza has run the gamut of on-ice roles.