Mike Ricci was in the Sharks' practice facility offices one day this week when he spotted team General Manager Doug Wilson.
"Geez, I wish I could play tomorrow," Ricci told him, referring to the playoff-opener against Calgary.
For seven seasons Ricci was the face of the franchise - with his rock-star hair and gap-toothed grin. He arguably became the most popular player in team history with a reckless-abandon style that often left him sprawled on the ice.
That finally caught up to him when a slow-healing neck injury forced his retirement last summer. Now working in the Sharks' front office, Ricci, 36, finds himself wishing he could still lace up his skates, oh, constantly.
"At least once a week he says he's going to start training again and that he's even going to play in the minors if he has to," said his wife, Beth. "All I can do is smile and laugh. I do feel bad. His heart wanted to play, but it was just too much for his body."
Ricci, who always has worn that heart on his sleeve, is forthright about the sense of loss that comes when an athlete says goodbye to a game that was so much a part of his life.
"It's weird, you never think you'd miss it as much as you do," he said. "I'm not used to waking up not feeling sore or banged up. It's like I haven't done anything. So now I find myself bending over as much as I can so at the end of the day my back is sore. But that's just the hockey mentality."
He paused.
"I guess I still think I'm a player."
Beginning of end
Ricci got the most out of an average-sized body. The fourth pick of the 1990 draft, he played in 1,099 games over 16 NHL seasons, scoring 605 points and winning a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 1996.
The beginning of the end came not with a stick in his hands, but rather a medicine ball. Two summers ago, while a member of the Phoenix Coyotes, Ricci was working out when he felt a knot in his neck. It wasn't until he grabbed for a sports drink after the workout that a shooting pain burned down his arm.
A disk had, in his words, blown apart. He would need to have two disks fused, a piece of hip bone and a titanium plate inserted and then "they just screwed it all back together. I didn't really ask too many questions. I just said to make sure I wake up."
Truth was, Ricci knew his career was in jeopardy.
"I tried to convince myself that I could get back," he said. "But seven months after surgery, I just couldn't do more than one push-up no matter how hard I tried. I could do everything else, but I just couldn't get my triceps to work."
After playing just seven games with Phoenix last season, he hung up the skates. Ricci and his wife, who have three young children, had sold their Willow Glen home to Jonathan Cheechoo after his last season with the Sharks in 2004. But now that his playing days were over, they decided to return to the South Bay, settling in Los Gatos.
Meanwhile, Wilson always had made it clear that he wanted Ricci back in the organization someday.
He also knew first-hand what it's like to have your body fail before your will. For Wilson, it was a back injury that led to his retirement before the 1993 season at age 36. A doctor had told him if he wanted to play with his kids when he was older, he had to quit.
"When you leave something that you truly love, something that you've done since you were a little boy, emotionally it's hard," Wilson said. "Guys like Mike, Bryan Marchment and myself all were able to get a pretty good kick at the can. But when it does end, there is a void."
A new career
Ask Ricci what exactly he does for the Sharks, and he shrugs.
"Adviser to hockey operations - at least that's what it says in the program."
Like Ricci, Marchment joined the front office last August. But he has a more conventional position as a scout working in player development. Ricci's job mostly has been, well, just being Ricci.
The Sharks have taken advantage of his cult-figure status and self-deprecating wit by using him as a team ambassador. Ricci had to grow into the role because he always has been uncomfortable with the adulation he received.
"He's actually a little more social than he used to be," Beth said. "He's come out of his shell a little bit. But he feels like San Jose has done so much for him that he enjoys giving back."
Early in the season, as he tried to figure out this retirement stuff, he wasn't sure what was worse - being around the team or not being around the team.
But as the year wore on, his loud voice became a more common presence in the Sharks' locker room. Lately he has been on the practice ice, doing whatever the coaches ask. Wilson also had him doing some pre-playoff scouting.
"Every once in awhile I'll get a phone call from Doug, sending me off on some assignment," Ricci said. "I think he more or less does it to keep me busy so I don't get in trouble. But it's been good for me and something that's really, really saved me."
Clearly, Ricci is being groomed to take on a larger role in some capacity . . . when he's ready.
The true difficulty of retirement, he said, has nothing to do with missing the fame or the roar of the crowd. It's just not being out there, on the ice.
Watching the playoffs isn't making it any easier.
"I think I can play and I would play," he said. "But my agent and my wife tell me: 'You're going to get killed out there.' Yet sometimes you think it might be worth it."
Beth said that's not happening. Well, she's pretty sure.
"But, hey, you never know," she said, laughing. "He is half-crazy."
Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@mercurynews.com.