"Mike Modano will see what free agency has to offer before he'll consider retirement, he said Thursday.

``I go back and forth a lot, but the bottom line is the injury I had really messed up last season,'' he said of getting his wrist punctured by a skate in November and missing 42 games. ``I felt great before I got hurt, I feel great now, but I missed out a on a lot of the season, and so it does make you feel like maybe there's something more.''

Modano, who turned 41 on June 7, was seeking a little closure when he decided to try free agency last summer.

Bottom line, he wasn't ready to call it a career when Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk told him that he would not get another contract in Dallas. So, he signed a one-year free agent deal, went back to his hometown of Detroit and played a season with the Red Wings in search of maybe a few answers.

The problem is he came up with an ``incomplete'' again. And he said while watching 42-year old Mark Recchi win a Stanley Cup with Boston that he did feel the hunger to play again."