Fedorov signed a five-year, $40 million contract with Anaheim on July 19, 2003, as an unrestricted free agent. The feeling was that he took less money to escape the shadow of Yzerman, then Detroit’s captain, now its general manager.

“I think he wanted his own team,” former Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood said then, when he was playing for the St. Louis Blues. “He’s not going to tell anybody, but I think that’s what he felt.”

In an interview before his Hockey Hall of Fame induction Nov. 3, 2003, Ilitch said he missed Fedorov. He recalled how the Red Wings helped Fedorov defect and how Fedorov even stayed with his daughter, Denise, for a couple of months afterward.

“There’s special attachment there because of that, and because [Carolina] tried to get him away one time and we had to come up with $28 million to make sure we kept him here,” Ilitch said then. “Hopefully, we’ll get him back one day.”

The first time Fedorov returned to Detroit, the fans booed him each time he touched the puck and cheered when he lost face-offs in a 7-2 Red Wings win at Joe Louis Arena on Dec. 3, 2003. The boos were especially loud when he scored against his former team for the one that had just swept it in the playoffs.

Fedorov finished his career with the Mighty Ducks, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Washington Capitals and Magnitogorsk of the Kontinental Hockey League, but he still had a place in Detroit and would return in the offseason.

He appreciated it more with age.

In 2012-13, when he was general manager of CSKA Moscow of the KHL, the team from which he once defected, he had little memorabilia in his office. What he did have was a framed photo that included him and Ilitch the night he won the Hart and Selke.

“Certainly,” he said then, “Detroit is a huge era for me.”

Time has passed. Ilitch died Feb. 10, 2017. His wife, Marian, turned 93 on Jan. 7. Their son Chris is CEO of Ilitch Companies, and he is the one who told Fedorov the Red Wings would retire his number.

Fedorov made a key comment in an interview the Red Wings released on social media.

“I made a wrong decision to leave,” Fedorov said. “It’s not so much that I leave. It’s just a business side to it all. I regret that. By far, that’s the most and probably the only regret I would have. I should have stayed with the Red Wings for the longest time. But like we say, until you try it, you don’t know what it is.”