Kari Lehtonen is back on the ice in Frisco.

But while he’s still wearing goalie skates – his signature older model that Stars equipment managers used to have to track down on eBay – he’s traded his pads and mask for a tracksuit and black baseball cap.

About a month ago Lehtonen reached out to Stars goalie coach Jeff Reese about helping out at with the prospects at the team’s development camp. He got his feet wet coaching over the past year, helping out with his son’s youth teams, but five and six-year-old goalies don’t really appreciate the intricacies of the reverse-VH or how to read a shot through a screen.

“I just wanted to know if I could come here and kind of test my feet in goalie coaching,” Lehtonen said on Tuesday. “I can relate a lot better to these young goalies than the little six-year-old ones.”

A year has passed since the window on Lehtonen’s career started to close.

He was a free agent at the end of the 2017-18 season and talked to a handful of teams during the interview period, but none were ready to present him with a contract. There were NHL teams that told Lehtonen they’d look to him as a potential contingency plan. If someone got injured or faltered in training camp, they might think about hiring him.

Lehtonen also didn’t want to go to Europe. He’s lived in the United States since he was 20, his wife is from Atlanta and the thought of signing with a team in Finland’s Liiga or the KHL wasn’t enticing. It was NHL or bust, so Lehtonen worked out and prepared last summer as if that opportunity would open. He took part in informal summer skates in Frisco with NHL players like the Benn brothers, who live in Dallas during the offseason. The phone never rang.

“I was thinking if somebody has a bad start or injuries and stuff, (I’d) be able to sneak in and go to a team,” Lehtonen said. “But I eventually decided just, ‘This is it.’ I started spending more time at home with my family and kids. I still didn’t like want to announce anything like I’m retiring because I didn’t want to close that door. I’ve seen other guys take a year off and then come back like Tim Thomas and a few other guys, so I didn’t want to kind of lock that door. But I decided I’m not going to play for a year and then see where I am.”

A year has passed. Now, the door is officially locked.

“I wanted to see if I get the itch to play again,” Lehtonen said, “but I haven’t felt like I want to suit up.”

Lehtonen doesn’t have any issue admitting he’s done playing, but still shies away from using the word retirement. He also doesn’t have any plans for a grand retirement announcement or speech.

“I think this has mostly bothered my parents. At their (jobs) back in Finland, they get questions like, ‘Is he going to play now somewhere?'” Lehtonen said. “But I’m not that guy that’s going to go in front of the microphone and talk about his career.”

For those in Dallas, it felt like Lehtonen had vanished. He was a fixture of the franchise for nine years, only to be gone without so much as a formal announcement or major acknowledgement. He made a couple of appearances at Stars games during the 2018-19 season as a fan, but no one was able to properly answer the question, “What happened to Kari Lehtonen?”

Lehtonen enjoyed one of the most decorated careers in the history of Finnish goaltenders. He won 310 games – third-most in NHL history amongst Finns – and had a career .912 save percentage and 2.71 goals against average.

Still, to some, his career never aligned with expectations. He entered the NHL with a ton of fanfare and was drafted second overall by the Atlanta Thrashers in 2002, but he wasn’t ready, nor mature enough, to truly succeed in Atlanta.

“Now, when I look at it, I knew that I needed more guidance, more help to push me to help become a better professional,” Lehtonen said. “I was just a kid who was extremely talented at being (a) goalie. Things were kind of too easy for me from 15 to 20 years old. Things came really easy, and I think that made it harder when things got rough – I didn’t know what to do. Those were still kind of the olden days, ‘Goalie, go figure it out.’ Of course, I tried to do the best to my knowledge, but I just did not have the knowledge to do the right things to prepare right, to practice right.”

Lehtonen puts some of the blame on himself. Coming from Finland, he was used to teams that played together year-round with players who were constantly together. He was ill-equipped for the long offseasons of the NHL, and the lack of structure that came with them.

“You sign here and you have nothing until six months from now,” he said. “I should’ve right away contacted the right people, had my own coaches and my own psychologists and people like that that I had no clue about. I tried to go and do push-ups and run a little bit but there was no kind of right plan. Just a big change. (It) took me years to grow and understand what needs to be done.”

It didn’t help Lehtonen’s health. During his time with Atlanta, he had surgery for a herniated disc and dealt with numerous groin injuries. He was considered damaged goods when Dallas traded for him in 2009. Then-Stars general manager Joe Nieuwendyk saw something in Lehtonen, and the team paired him with an on-ice support system he never enjoyed in Atlanta. For the first time, Lehtonen had guidance on how to live and train like an NHL player.

“That was one of the big moments in my career to be found,” Lehtonen said. “And I stumbled on this great place.”

The next four seasons were the best of Lehtonen’s career. Between 2010 and 2014 he posted a .918 save percentage, had a 114-80-28 record and was the team MVP on a franchise struggling to regain its footing in the Western Conference.

It wouldn’t last: Lehtonen’s save percentage dipped to .905 during his final four years, eventually giving way to Ben Bishop in 2017-2018. He still laments the timing of it all. He was at his best when his team couldn’t match his level, and at his worst when they finally could.

His final NHL game came on April 7, 2018 against the Los Angeles Kings. It wasn’t the farewell he planned, but looking back, it couldn’t have gone much better. He made 34 saves in a 4-2 victory, with his family in attendance after Kari and his wife had taken the kids to Disneyland in Anaheim two days earlier.

“Win your last game, that sometimes means winning Stanley Cup,” Lehtonen said with a chuckle. “But it was especially nice because my whole family was there… seeing all of them during the warm-ups and after the game, it was just – it was cool. Cool feeling.”

So, what happened to Lehtonen?

He found other passions. He bought a new house in Dallas and better connected with his kids, particularly his soon-to-be seven-year-old son Mikko, whose hockey team he helps coach.

Mostly, he said, “I’ve had more time to play with the cars.” Lehtonen has always been a fan of automobiles and purchased a Porsche with his first big NHL paycheck back in 2006. During his playing days, he was a fixture in a comical video series called “Cars with Kari” for PM Standley Motorcars. Lehtonen played the aloof Finn in those videos, which couldn’t have been further from the truth when it came to his knowledge of what’s under the hood.

“I spend a lot of time in my garage,” he said. “That’s been kind of my baby, figuring out what kind of tools and things I need there and installing them,” Lehtonen said.

He’s also had more time to watch cars race around the track. Lehtonen has developed a deep motorsports fandom over the past year, estimating he’s taken the family to 10 different race weekends in various disciplines. They’ve been to Austin for a Formula One race, made the trip to Forth Worth for each race at Texas Motor Speedway, and have driven to a handful of other NASCAR events, most recently in Charlotte. He hopes to one day attend racing school himself so he can experience the thrill firsthand.

Lehtonen said his favorite part about the NASCAR fandom is that it came from his son. Mikko was a NASCAR fan before his dad was. He knows every driver – Jimmie Johnson is his favorite – and races die-cast cars around his room.

“It’s something that’s truly like his own thing, nobody has pushed him that way at all, he just found it,” Lehtonen said. “That’s neat.”

He’s not entirely sure what the future holds beyond that. He and Mikko are going to continue watching NASCAR and rooting for Jimmie Johnson. He’s looking forward to diving into the interests of his younger children as they develop. He’s going to keep working on his Porsche in the garage. Maybe the coaching bug takes hold after this week-long gig at Stars development camp.

Either way, Lehtonen is comfortable with life. It’s slower and faster at the same time, and that’s just fine by him.