The days leading up to NHL free agency are always a whirlwind. When the market officially opens each year, at noon ET on July 1, teams, players and agents alike all have to be ready to make major life decisions in a matter of hours.

So as that day approached this year, former Coyotes, Red Wings and Blue Jackets winger Christian Fischer noticed that he had a couple of missed calls from his agent, Craig Oster of Newport Sports Management — who was no doubt wanting to plan for those decisions.

What Oster didn’t know was that Fischer’s decision had already been made: he is retiring from the NHL after nine seasons and 523 games, at the age of 28.

At his age, Fischer could have had plenty of good professional playing years ahead of him, in his role as a trusted checker, penalty-killer and locker room glue guy. But increasingly, he had found himself being pulled in another direction.

“Over the last couple years, I think I just look at my life and what makes me happy, and being around family and kind of my life in Scottsdale — some of my friends here are really close with me, and I have a pretty small group out here, and honestly it’s just more so a decision of moving on into another chapter of my life,” Fischer said on a phone call Thursday night. “I wish there was a big reasoning why, but in the end, I’m very thankful for the career I had, but just personally I think I know it’s time for a new chapter in my life.”

Fischer wasn’t ready to share specifics about that next chapter publicly just yet, beyond that he’s moving on to a business opportunity in the golf world with a close friend in Arizona.

Fitting for an NHL role player, Fischer would have been content to simply fade into the background as he moved on from the sport. But in making this decision —  an uncommon one for a player so young — he also wanted to say “thank you to all my teammates, and trainers and coaches.”

“I’m very thankful for all the people I’ve come across, and I’d tell you right now: I didn’t get here on my own,” Fischer said. “It makes me look back and just appreciate the whole journey, and it makes me very thankful for it all.”

Fischer grew up in Chicago and played for the U.S. National Team Development Program en route to being the 32nd pick in 2015 NHL Draft. He made his NHL debut for the Arizona Coyotes at 19. The following season, the 6-foot-2 forward scored 15 goals and 33 points in a breakout campaign at age 20.

Christian Fischer celebrates a goal in 2017. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Soon, though, Fischer realized that his path to carving out an NHL career was probably not going to be that of a goal scorer. He viewed himself as a player of average skill, average skating — “pretty much average in everything,” Fischer said. “You had to work your butt off, and you had to find a way to impact the game in whatever way.”

He looks back on his younger days in Arizona, and the lessons he took from Coyotes’ veterans, such as Brad Richardson and Derek Stepan, in guiding him to what eventually became his calling card as a pro.

“They kind of sat me down after my second or third year and just said, ‘hey, listen, everybody wants to score 20 goals, everyone wants to be on the power play, but if you’re not doing that, your time in this league’s going to be cut short pretty quickly,” Fischer said. “I remember being young, just going into the (penalty kill) meetings in Arizona, I wasn’t even PKing, just to learn the systems just in case that opportunity ever called. And wouldn’t you know it, a couple years later, that was my role, that was what I loved to do. Just the little details of the game, and just being a good teammate and just doing the little mucky things.”

That side of the game doesn’t come with much glamor. It also doesn’t come with the biggest pay days. But Fischer was OK with all that.

“That’s never why I played hockey,” he said. “That had no meaning to me, and that’s probably why I was very OK with making kind of that career move and career adjustment, to just once again finding a way to make an impact in a game, and have a career.”

When he left Arizona in 2023 as a free agent, he signed in Detroit and became a relied-upon matchup player for the Red Wings, often on a line with Michael Rasmussen and Andrew Copp. He was a natural fit, and drew praise for what are often unheralded contributions in that role.

“Winning seems to always look the same: you need the top-end guys, but you need those guys in the trenches. And he’s one of those guys in the trenches,” former Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said of Fischer in 2024. “He’s the best energy we have: vocal, very positive. … You need that.”

For all those reasons, it made sense that Oster was once again prepping to field offers for Fischer in the lead-up to July 1 this year. But when Fischer finally got back to him on June 30, he broke the news to his agent that he was ready to embrace the parts of his life outside of hockey.

Certainly, Fischer has loved being in the NHL — “the road trips, and the dinners, and grinding with the boys, games, practices, whatever it is. I love that, and I’ve always been happy,” he said.

But playing the sport professionally is also not the entirety of how he sees himself as a person.

“Probably in the last year or two, I’ve really thought about just kind of what I want to do with my life, and what makes me happy, and spending time with my friends and family,” Fischer said. “And obviously, listen, I know if I were to play another five or six years, I could do that when I’m 34, 35, I understand that. … It’s what makes me happy, and it’s what I want to do, and I’ve got a great business opportunity to (pursue) and be around my family more, and just basically move on that way.”

There are all kinds of small sacrifices that NHL players make during the season, but now, Fischer said, he will be able to spend holidays with his family every year. His sister is pregnant, and Fischer is looking forward to being home and seeing his second nephew come into the world. He can spend more time with his parents, and take his dad to play in golf tournaments.

His dad made a hole-in-one earlier this week, Fischer said.

When he sat his family down in the last couple of months and let them know what he was thinking, “they were ecstatic,” he said.

Of course, there are things he will miss about the NHL. He’ll miss playing the games, and being in the locker room after a win. He’s always been one to prompt the team group chat to get together before dinner on the road, and will miss the camaraderie, whether the team was winning or struggling. He might miss that part even more. He’s proud that he reached (and then surpassed) the 500-game milestone in the league this past season.

“If you told me that when I was 10 years old, ‘you’re going to play 500 games in the NHL,’” Fischer said, “I would be the happiest kid you’ve ever seen.”

And now, 523 games later, he’s at peace with his decision to walk away.

“Just very, very thankful,” Fischer said. “I think that’s the biggest thing is just thanking all the people that have been involved, all the way from media to trainers to coaches, players, family, friends, everybody. … I’m so, so grateful to have experienced this with so many people. I guess that’s my biggest wish, is that I got to make a lot of people happy and smile, and when they got to see me skate on the ice, I hope I made them proud.”

(Top photo: Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images)