Curious Hair wrote:
Very good player with a very good career. I feel bad that he had to spend a couple of still-productive years wasting away in Broward on league-worst teams. Campbell's Sabres teams of '06 and '07 get overlooked because that was such a weird dead zone for the NHL -- fresh off the lockout but still not in the hands of the new generation just yet -- but he was a huge contributor to two loaded teams that had damn good shots at the Cup. I'm a little surprised he retired because I think he could have played one more year at a fairly high level, albeit with a reduced workload: maybe 55-60 games on the year.
Amen to the post about how valuable he was to the 2010 Cup. I remember we lost Campbell to an Ovechkin hit late in the year and tried to cope by moving Byfuglien back to defense, where he wasn't any good yet, and woooow was it a relief to get Campbell back and move Buff back up front. He seems to have gotten some sinecure with the team to do youth leagues and shit. Good for him.
Campbell didn't return until Game 4 of that Preds series.