Pierre Turgeon made his retirement from the NHL official Wednesday, having finished a potential Hall of Fame career in Colorado the past two seasons.
“At one point we did decide, as far as retiring, but we wanted to take all summer really to think about it and just to make sure,” Turgeon said at a news conference in the Montreal office of his agent, Bob Sauve. “And at the end of the summer it was the same answer. Two years ago we thought about it before moving from Dallas to Colorado, but we didn’t … it was just time.”
The Denver Post reported in July that Turgeon would retire, but the 515-goal scorer talked it over with friends and family before making the decision public. He played the last two seasons with the Avs and was hampered throughout this past season by injuries.
Turgeon said he will be coaching his daughter Elisabeth’s under-16 hockey team in the Colorado Select Girls Hockey Association.
“I love being around the kids. … I love seeing the way they’re improving every year,” Turgeon said. “Hockey has been very good to me and I want to give it back to hockey.”
– Adrian Dater
PCL attendance is up again
The Triple-A Pacific Coast League set an attendance record for the 2007 season. The league drew more than 7.4 million fans for the second consecutive season, an average of 6,000 fans per game.
The 7,420,095 fans this season passed the mark set in 2006, when the league drew 7,413,505. Sacramento led the PCL, and all of minor-league baseball, in attendance with a season-total 710,235. The Colorado Springs Sky Sox had a league-best percentage increase of 8.4 percent.
