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Retiring Brooks Orpik couldn’t walk up stairs after midseason knee surgery: ‘I didn’t want to play through the pain’ anymore

Capitals defenseman Brooks Orpik met with the media Tuesday afternoon after the team announced his retirement in the morning. Orpik got emotional several times during the interview when describing how much pain he was in after having arthroscopic knee surgery on November 20.

“I guess it doesn’t matter (if I’m honest) at this point,” Orpik said. “I’d use the elevator at Verizon to go up and down because I couldn’t go up and down the stairs. When I couldn’t do that, it was probably time to stop playing hockey. It was at a point where I could play for two and a half hours and pay for it afterward and try to do it all over again. The trainers helped me out a lot here this year and I almost felt guilty because they’ve got 23, 24 guys to take care of and I was taking up so much of their time.”

Despite Orpik’s struggles, head coach Todd Reirden played the veteran defenseman in virtually every game down the stretch.

“He’s a professional in every meaning of the word,” Reirden said. “That just is another part of the lore of who and what Brooks Orpik is and will continue to be in whatever he decides to do with his life. That was a difficult situation for him to battle through with his knee. It was something he didn’t complain about, he didn’t talk a lot about it. If it was going to affect his ability to play the game we would have made a different decision. He did a lot of good things for our team still. I thought he played well in the playoffs. Sometimes the body just gets to a point where you can’t do it anymore without causing yourself some real permanent damage down the road. The Capitals are so fortunate to have had this guy come here and was a major factor in us winning the Stanley Cup.”

Orpik said he made the decision early in the season. ‘I didn’t want to play through the pain’ any more, he said. Orpik also cited wanting to spend more time with his family, in particular, his two daughters Harlow and Brooklyn.

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