Just a few more weeks until NHL training camps will open and for many veteran players who find themselves unsigned but don’t want to retire this is about the time of summer when a professional tryout might be the only path back to the league.
For a lot of players tryouts are the last gasp of a once proud career. We saw it in 2015 when Sergei Gonchar tried to defy Father Time and make the Penguins at age 41. Quick, remember Bill Guerin as a Philadelphia Flyer? Well it happened for a few weeks in 2010 on a failed tryout too, and was the last NHL team he ever ended up playing for.