Hold off on the retirement ceremony.
Matt Martin wants to play next season. And so does Cal Clutterbuck.
“The retirement narrative wasn’t one I started,” Martin said Friday morning at Islanders breakup day. “I certainly plan on playing hockey. My focus is to get healthy and start building myself back up and get ready for next season.”
Now, with the pair hitting unrestricted free agency, the question is whether the Islanders decide to bring back Martin, 34, and Clutterbuck, 36, on new contracts.
Both have been synonymous with the logo for the last decade, minus Martin’s two-year interlude with the Maple Leafs, but after the Islanders failed to meet expectations for a third straight season, bringing the whole band back together might not fly.
General manager Lou Lamoriello acknowledged that some changes were “inevitable” and that as much as he values loyalty, “there’s nothing sacred.”
On the players’ side, both have the preference of returning to the Islanders, but knew that it was far from a foregone conclusion.
“I’d love to play and obviously I’d love to play here,” Clutterbuck said. “This has been home for a very long time. Put a lot into my time here and had great experiences. I will be an Islander for life.
“Whether I get a chance to play next year or not, that’s out of my control. At the same time, I get some time to make some decisions. Just got to gather some information, look at the options and go from there.”
On an emotional level, the loss of one or both players would be seismic for a dressing room in which they are, in Mat Barzal’s words, “big brothers” to pretty much everybody.
“I knew a lot of these guys when they were 20-year-old kids and now they’ve got three kids,” Martin said. “It’s pretty cool to be around long enough to experience that.”
But the Islanders have other considerations, and those will take precedent.
Martin, who suffered three different injuries this season, also still needs an MRI exam to check out a lower-body issue that kept him out of the last two games of the playoffs.
Inside the dressing room Friday, neither player was emotional thinking it might be their last time there.
“I feel like even if this were the end of the road, there’s guys who I’ve played with that have retired recently here and they’re always here,” Clutterbuck said. “… I just feel like this place has been my second home.
“So even if I were to call it quits, I live here, it’s my home. I’ll be popping in here once in a while to give Barzy s—t or use the gym or whatever. I’ll be around. It’s not like I’m going to walk out the door, it’s going to close behind me and it’ll never open again.”