A defensive defeseman whose stay-at-home physical style complemented Andrei Markov the longest with the Montréal Canadiens, an All-Star Game participant both from Habs fans stuffing the ballots for the Centennial home-ice game and because Markov made him look much better than he actually was, whose career high was 4 goals (a total he reached in both 2006-07 and 2007-08) yet had the Toronto Maple Leafs knocking at his door with an unbelievable five-year, $22.5M deal (with a $4.3M cap hit), which of course the Leafs spent a compliance buyout on after four seasons. He did convince the Carolina Hurricanes to take a chance on him, but could only suit up for 32 games (4 assists, 14 PIMs) in 2013-14 before retiring and going back to University of Michigan to finish his degree.
Chances are he's finished with that, because the Buffalo Sabres announced earlier today he'd been named as a Player Development Coach, presumably with the organization's young defensemen.
Here he is from his days in Toronto, across the lake from Buffalo, wearing their classic blue (home) uniform, on card #345 from Upper Deck's 2011-12 O-Pee-Chee set:
Habs and Leafs fans like to rag on Komisarek - the former because he went to their team's long-time rivals as a free agent, and the second because of how disappointed they were that their prized free agent couldn't possibly live up to his contract's expectations - but both should keep in mind that he was, indeed, a hard-to-play-against defender, among the best in the league at shutting down the opposition and a fine defensive-zone checker... until he took on Milan Lucic in a fight and lost any hockey sense he ever had. And things only got worse when he tried to get his revenge, and again while playing for Toronto.
There are no two ways about it: Lucic ended this guy's career.
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