In what should have been a summer of recovery and celebration, the highest paid player in all of hockey somehow lost his way.
Peter Forsberg thought it would come back in July, maybe in August, certainly when September began.
He thought he would feel like playing again, be healthy and ready to be among the best in the National Hockey League.
He thought all he needed was a summer to rest his body and rest his mind -- but on Friday night he decided he wasn't about to fool anyone, let alone himself. He wasn't about to take $11 million US on false pretenses.
If he couldn't be what he wanted himself to be, then he made a most earnest and unusual sporting decision -- he decided to take a hockey sabbatical until he felt like playing again.
It wasn't only the spleen he lost in last year's Stanley Cup final, although that certainly played in to his decision. It was a battery of body parts not feeling right, a little ache here, a little ache there, two troubled ankles and an unwillingness at this stage to live his life -- no matter how rich it would make him -- to play below his own expectations.
Few athletes would be bold enough to be so honest. Few athletes would be frank enough with themselves to walk away from lottery-like money.
This is like Carlos Delgado walking away, or Mats Sundin or Curtis Joseph. It is that stunning and, for the Avalanche, that devastating.
But then, this is Peter Forsberg, who has always set the highest standards for himself and almost always achieved them. The decision made here, to likely miss the NHL season, and quite likely the Olympic Games, was excruciatingly difficult.
The decision was entirely based on health -- both physical and mental. After the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup without him, Forsberg, 28, returned home to Sweden with the full intention of playing this season. He was hurting and run down in June, but all the while he figured two solid months off would rejuvenate his body and his mind.
In this case, one was just as important as the other. And while his health did improve, although not to his satisfaction, his eagerness to play wasn't there. The dogged enthusiasm that has marked his career and labelled him the best all-round player in the world had gone missing.
He talked about that to his agent, Don Baizley, in the summer, figuring it was just summertime apprehension. When he saw everybody, when he went to training camp, when he began working, everything was supposed to be fine.
They talked about it again and again. But in almost every conversation there was a sense of reluctance, and a sense he couldn't play the way he once did.
He had surgery this summer on both ankles and that, in Forsberg's mind, hindered his ability to skate. That, people say, bothered him more than he will let on. And after skating with the Avalanche in the opening days of training camp in Sweden, where he is a national hero and was expected to lead its Olympic team, he decided it was time to walk away.
For how long, nobody knows.
On Friday, he called his father, Kent, his longtime coach, and his agent, the trusted Baizley in Winnipeg, and told them he was taking a sabbatical from the game.
"I hope people aren't mad at me," Forsberg told the Denver Post. "I love Denver and I love playing hockey with those guys. It was tough telling the guys, very tough. But I feel that I'm not ready to go out and do what I wanted to do on the ice. And I don't think it's fair to anybody in the organization if I can't go out and play at the level I wanted to play.
"I'm just going to take a rest here for a while and hopefully I'm going to come back."
Hopefully, for the game, he will be back, because there aren't many Peter Forsbergs in this sport, or any other. There aren't many athletes with this high a standard, with this kind of honesty, with a selflessness that says that if he can't live up to the obligations of his contract and his personal obligations, he isn't about to steal anybody's money.
The time away, if that's all it is, will be for a personal search, to find the motivation he once took for granted, to try to recapture the enthusiasm and the talent that truly made him special.