I do think that the family reason for not wanting to go isn't justified. When you get paid millions of dollars to do a job it comes with sacrifices. One of those is not seeing your family when you want to. It is part of the job. Plenty of people on tough rotations that don't get to see their family as much as they would like. And with the money they have they could easily all move to Toronto for the next 3 months and hire a private tutor for the older kid to get them finished their school year. So to me there were plenty of ways to deal with the family situation that would have allowed him to go Toronto. At some level of Salary you are expect to make sacrifices. I believe that this is one of them.
All of that said I don't hold it against Kipper. He was a great goalie for us and was the reason we had hope in any game we were playing and we don't have to watch him make the leafs better in the playoffs. That would have been tough to stomach. In the end its a second round pick that would have been nice. For me this one blemish at the end of his career does nothing to take away from his great contributions from the team.
I would perfer he retire now rather than wait until the end of the season as I think having more roster room for young guys. I don't think we should play him again until the end of the season. If he does stay with the team only give him the last home game against anaheim.
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