Andrew Ference Getting Ready For Retirement
Today, former Boston Bruins defenseman (and now Edmonton Oilers) Andrew Ference shared with ESPN.com that he expects this will be his last year playing in the NHL. Ference has played for four teams in his 16-year NHL career (Pittsburgh, Calgary, Boston, and Edmonton), and added his name to hockey immortality when he helped the Black and Gold bring the Cup home to Boston in 2011. Ference believes that the Oilers will buy out his contract after the season is over, and he’s come to peace with it.
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“I think that’s it for me,” Ference shared with ESPN.com. “More than likely (the Oilers) will probably buy me out this summer, and we’ll probably part ways. That’s it.”
Three years ago, Ference made the move from Boston to Edmonton, where he was made captain of the Oilers. This season, Ference resigned his captaincy due to his inability to take to the ice. So far this season, the 36-year-old blueliner has only played in six games, his last being on Nov. 27 against the Detroit Red Wings. He was placed on injured reserve in January, and he informed ESPN’s Joe McDonald that he’s “95 percent” sure he’ll undergo hip surgery at the end of the season.
Ference played six and a half seasons in Boston, coming over from the Calgary Flames in the middle of the 2006-07 season at the trade deadline. During that time, the defenseman earned 94 points(16 goals) with the Black and Gold. He was one of the team’s enforcers, and he had absolutely no qualms about engaging anyone who disrespected or attempted to harm a fellow Bruin on the ice.
Having won the Stanley Cup, he feels significantly more at peace with the prospect of retirement.
“I would have a completely different mindset if I never won the Cup,” he said. “I always would have been really bitter, losing in Calgary. When you lose, you never get over it until you actually win. It’s awful, but since we won in Boston, everything else is cream on top.”
“I’ve been blessed — 100 percent,” Ference said. “I’ve always said it takes a ton of hard work, but you need a huge boatload of good luck and good timing. I feel like I’ve had that. You think about the different kinds of trades you’ve been through and landing on certain teams where it just works.”
So what’s next for Captain Planet? Ference will be finishing up studying corporate sustainability, and taking that education out into the world once he hangs up the skates. While Ference may be from Edmonton, he’s become a Harvard man, studying at their extension school. (Giving him another tie to Boston.)
“Finishing and seeing the end in sight but having other interests in life has been so key,” said Ference about his next chapter. “I try to preach that to all those young guys, like have other interests and get involved in other stuff because it makes this transition a lot easier and have confidence going into the next phase of your life without spinning your wheels, wondering what the hell you’re going to do with yourself.”