Fourteen years ago this month, when Mike Modano ended his NHL career by signing a one-day contract with the Dallas Stars, he had never heard of another player entering retirement in such fashion. But the concept has since become an unofficial training camp ritual, with aging veterans increasingly rejoining their preferred teams on a purely ceremonial basis.

So when Modano recently ran into the latest soon-to-be-retired NHL veteran at their respective daughters’ flag football game near Saint Paul, Minn., he posed a question.

“Wait, you’re doing what?” Modano jokingly asked Marc-André Fleury.

It’s no joke: Before filing his retirement papers to the NHL, the goaltender with the second-most wins in league history will return to Pittsburgh to practice and play in a preseason game with the Penguins this weekend. Signing a professional tryout contract, he will once again don the Skating Penguin logo and his trademark Pittsburgh gold pads and reunite with former teammates and fellow three-time Stanley Cup winners Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.

In a sense, the fact that Fleury plans to play at least a period of Saturday night’s home exhibition against the Columbus Blue Jackets is unprecedented. According to his agent, Allan Walsh, it is believed no other NHL player has ever actually appeared in a preseason game after signing a ceremonial retirement deal.

In another, the netminder is merely following in a tradition that has spread to all classes of the league, from legends like Daniel Alfredsson (Ottawa Senators, 2014), Zdeno Chara (Boston Bruins, 2022) and Pavel Datsyuk (Detroit Red Wings, 2022), to relative journeymen such as Owen Nolan (San Jose Sharks, 2012), Erik Cole (Carolina Hurricanes, 2017), Olli Jokinen (Florida Panthers, 2017) and Wayne Simmonds (Philadelphia Flyers, 2024).

Modano, for his part, remembered the call in summer 2011 that he received from then-Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk, a former teammate, offering a ceremonial retirement.

“Same guy who didn’t sign me the year before,” Modano said, laughing while referring to his final NHL season with the Red Wings. “He wasn’t there too long; he didn’t sign me and brought me back.”

Flanked by his parents, former teammates such as Brett Hull, and friends from the Dallas area, Modano soon entered a conference room at Hotel Crescent Court near what was then American Airlines Center in Sept. 2011. It was set up for a “full-blown press conference,” he said, capped off by Modano signing a one-day contract. The dollar figure on the paper: $999,999.99 — an honorary amount that paid tribute to his No. 9, which the Stars retired three years later.

“There were a few hundred people there, and you can’t really prepare for that scenario,” Modano recalled. “It’s harder to get through than any interview I did after a game, even in the Stanley Cup (Final), when you kind of make a couple of comments, answer a couple of questions, blah, blah …

“This was kind of a collection of thoughts about something I’d been doing since I was 7. You’re talking 35 years. I felt like I had to honor all of the people, and it was tough ground to cover. You really get at a loss for words, but I think that’s what makes those kinds of things special for everybody.”

Bryan Bickell had already cemented his status as a sporting hero in Chicago when he signed a one-day contract to retire with the Blackhawks in Oct. 2017. He scored nine goals during the 2012-13 playoffs, none more important than a tying tally seconds before Dave Bolland’s Cup-winning goal in the final minute in Game 6 in Boston.

Traded to the Carolina Hurricanes after the 2015-16 season, Bickell went on to play in only 11 more NHL games. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in November 2016 and retired the following summer. Chicago then brought him home, so to speak, for what the team dubbed “One More Shift.” After putting his name to ceremonial paper, Bickell borrowed some gear from the equipment staff and pulled on the Blackhawks jersey one final time, taking a lap around their United Center as teammates stood along the blue line before their season opener.

As with other one-day contract signees such as Barrett Jackman (St. Louis Blues, 2016), Alex Edler (Vancouver Canucks, 2022) and Bryan Little (Winnipeg Jets, 2024), Bickell had spent the vast majority of his career under contract with one team before moving elsewhere near the end. Drafted by Chicago in the second round in 2004, he relished the “special” chance to return.

“I signed my contract, did my little thing on the ice,” Bickell said. “It was a victory lap.”

Last year, Bryan Little signed a one-day ceremonial “contract” to retire with the Winnipeg Jets. (Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)

Technically speaking, according to the NHL, these one-day retirement contracts are unofficial. The league’s hard salary cap and roster limits prohibit the feel-good moment from being anything other than ritualistic.

When he signed his one-day contract with the Stars, Modano joked with Nieunwedyk about skating for one period of a regular-season game. But such a scenario would require a player to sign an actual standard contract, placing his GM and coach in an untenable situation.

Fleury’s situation differs because he is signing a PTO, a type of deal that often attracts free-agent veterans hoping to catch on with an organization in training camp. The Penguins will void his contract after he takes the ice against the Blue Jackets, technically making him a free agent until he files retirement papers with the league.

The idea was the brainchild of Penguins president of hockey operations and general manager Kyle Dubas, who was gobsmacked by the reception Fleury received — not only from adoring Penguins fans and former teammates, but also team and arena staff — during his final regular-season game in Pittsburgh as a member of the Minnesota Wild last October. That night, Dubas resolved to devise a way to honor Fleury if he ever wanted to officially retire with the Penguins.

In drawing up the contract, Fleury and Dubas intended to permanently heal any lingering wounds from a 2017 split Fleury once called “heartbreaking.” Fleury also liked the idea of getting a full-circle moment with the franchise that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2003 — and an opportunity for his two daughters and son to see and remember Dad playing there too.

“I think you’ll see more teams do it with players who, like Marc, are a big part of a team’s history,” Bickell said. “I could see the Blackhawks doing it with (former captain Jonathan) Toews. Why not?”

After a two-year hiatus, Toews is returning to the NHL this season with the Winnipeg Jets. However, as one of only two current players to wear the “C” for three Cup champions, Toews will forever be thought of as a Blackhawk. Whether he eventually retires with them, either on a ceremonial level or after an actual shift, remains an open question.

“A skater can take one twirl and be done,” Modano said. “I think you’ll see the guys like (Fleury), guys who really are part of the history of a team, be into something like that to retire.”

Modano will be following along when his fellow flag football dad takes the ice for the Penguins this weekend — if only to see how the historical one-day contract plays out.

“I can already hear him: ‘Trap it up, boys. Dump it deep. Don’t let anything get in the zone,’” Modano said.

Actually, Fleury is maintaining more realistic expectations for his version of the one-day sendoff.

As he recently told The Athletic via text, “I just hope I (don’t) break a hip or let in seven.”

(Top photos of Mike Modano and Bryan Bickell: AP Photo / LM Otero and Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)