Bernie Nicholls retires

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP-CP) -- Bernie Nicholls, reduced to playing on San Jose's fourth line in his 18th NHL season, has been dropped by the Sharks and offered a job in the team's front office.
General manager Dean Lombardi floated the idea that Nicholls should leave after Saturday's game against the New York Rangers. On Sunday, the two met again and agreed.
"Right now we're letting Bernie deal with the issues surrounding the idea of retirement and also trying to develop a position for him and present that to him," Sharks spokesman Chris Kelleher said. "Hopefully, he'll accept and stay with the team. But as of now, his last game was Saturday."
"They've announced I'm done playing here," Nicholls told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I don't know what I should do. It doesn't make any sense. I never expected it to be this way -- you want to go out on your terms."
Nicholls, 37, said he wants to help the team in any way he can.
"All we're trying to do is find out what they have in store for me," Nicholls said.
Lombardi said taking Nicholls off the ice was "the hardest thing I've had to do."
"I don't like having to trade players, or deal with contract holdouts. But for me to tell a future Hall of Famer that you recommend this ... I spent the last 48 hours agonizing over it," Lombardi told the San Jose Mercury News.
"To me, the right players deserve the right respect when they're done playing. I have to be very careful how I say this: I think for the good of the game and the good of the player, I think Bernie Nicholls should go out a certain way, playing at a certain level."
Nicholls, a three-time NHL all-star, had 475 goals and 734 assists in 1,127 career games with Los Angeles, the Rangers, Edmonton, New Jersey, Chicago and San Jose.
The native of Haliburton, Ont., is one of eight NHL players to score 70 or more goals in a season. He scored 70 and had 150 points for the Los Angeles Kings while playing with Wayne Gretzky in 1988-89. But he never scored more than 27 goals after that.
He was the Kings' sixth choice (73rd overall) in the 1980 NHL entry draft. In his ninth season with Los Angeles, the Kings traded the six-foot, 185-pound centre to the Rangers. He was subsequently part of the Rangers-Oilers deal that sent Mark Messier to Broadway in 1991.
The Oilers traded Nicholls to the Devils in 1993. The Blackhawks signed him as a free agent in 1994. He reached free agency again in 1996 and signed with the Sharks.
He ranks 26th in NHL history in points with 1,209 in 1,127 games, and 32nd in goals, with 475, and assists, with 734.
He's also one of 11 players to have an eight-point game, with two goals and six assists in a 1988 game against Toronto.

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