Last Monday, Boston Bruins defenseman Brian Leetch made his first appearance at Madison Square Garden as a member of the visiting team. And though the fans’ emotional response and the opportunity to visit with old friends were certainly positives, Leetch found his homecoming to be heart wrenching.

“Going on the ice, that’s when it got really difficult,” Leetch said in an exclusive interview with The New York Sun at the Bruins’ practice facility in Wilmington, Mass. “It was just a strange thing to be there in a visiting uniform and on the visiting bench, to have people rooting for you yet rooting against your team; a lot of memories going on.”

Indeed, the Garden faithful showered the 38-year-old Leetch with cheers, both before the game and in its final minutes. And though he was certainly thrilled by the response, it didn’t come as a surprise.

“I knew that I wasn’t going to be booed,” he said. “I’ve seen other players come back, like Adam Graves and Mark [Messier], who had been there for a lot of years and there through when we won the Cup. I didn’t know how the game was going to unfold or what was going to happen, and it’s a very humbling feeling to get that reception. It puts you in a strange place, because it’s not a scripted day, and there’s no real correct way to respond, and you don’t really know what to do. I’ll never forget that evening, that’s for sure.”

When asked about Leetch’s place in the pantheon of Ranger greats, former captain Mark Messier was unwavering in his praise.

“He deserves to be noticed as one of the greatest Rangers ever, if not the greatest Ranger ever,” Messier said, and a look at the former Ranger star’s body of work yields the conclusion that Messier is correct. But with his typical humility, Leetch simply smiled when told of Messier’s adulation and reversed the compliment.

“Well, it’s different because I was drafted by the team and played for them from my rookie year on,” he said. “But I think without a question, if you pointed to ‘greatest Ranger’ then you’re pointing to Mark, because of his leadership and what he was able to accomplish, and the way the organization was perceived before he came and afterward, and [he was] able to lead the team to the Stanley Cup after 54 years.”

During his 17 seasons with the Rangers, Leetch set team career records for goals (240), assists (741), and points (981) by a defenseman, establishing himself as the franchise’s best-ever blueliner. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP) following the Rangers’ dramatic Stanley Cup victory in 1994, as well as the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman in 1997. Leetch was also a key component of America’s 1996 World Cup title and 2002 Olympic silver medal-winning team.

Sadly, the circumstances under which Leetch left the Rangers at the 2004 trade deadline have left scars that have yet to heal two years later. About a month prior to that deadline, Rangers GM Glen Sather assured Leetch that he wouldn’t be dealt away. But when the Toronto Maple Leafs came to the table with an offer Sather couldn’t refuse, Leetch was suddenly packing his bags and leaving the only NHL team for which he’d ever played.

Making analysis of that trade especially difficult is the Rangers’ surprising success this season. It cannot be disputed that the Blueshirts, currently on pace to reach the playoffs for the first time since 1997,are a much better team in this, their first full season without Leetch.

While it would be unfair to conclude that the Rangers are better because Leetch is gone, the package of prospects and draft picks acquired from Toronto did enable the Rangers to accelerate their rebuilding program dramatically. Sather may have been wrong to mislead Leetch about his future with the Rangers, but that trade was without question the right move from a hockey standpoint.

There were persistent rumors throughout this season that Leetch might be brought back in a trade prior to the deadline, but no such move came. Ever the realist, Leetch understood that Sather wasn’t willing to offer the Bruins a deal compelling enough to pry him from Boston, meaning he didn’t value him enough to bring him back to New York.

“If there was some kind of real desire to have me there, they could’ve,” Leetch said. “If you’re just trying to steal a player, it didn’t make me feel like I was wanted just because they were poking around to see what was available.”

Leetch will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and though he didn’t rule out the possibility of a return, he also didn’t sound particularly interested in pursuing a Broadway revival.

“You certainly can’t rule out anything,” he said. “But you know, I was in that situation this past summer, and I think if the Rangers – and Glen Sather – had envisioned me playing there, coming back, he’d have talked to me either before I got traded or at least this past summer. They’ve gone in a different direction, and they’re having success, and I’d be surprised if I ended up back there.”

Assuming Leetch does not return to the Rangers, there are two relatively easy-to-achieve milestones that he will not achieve. His 981 points are second all-time on the Rangers list, just 40 points behind forward Rod Gilbert, the Blueshirts’ career scoring leader. And with 1,129 games played, Leetch is just 31 games behind fellow defenseman Harry Howell.

So, as much as the Rangers’ success this season should be cherished, the fans who were directing “Bring Him Back” chants toward Leetch during Messier’s retirement ceremony realize the same thing Leetch does: that the business of hockey isn’t always kind, and that sometimes the extradition of heroes is a necessary price to pay for success.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of InsideHockey.com.