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Clarke MacArthur has returned to the ice at the Canadian Tire Centre because he’s not ready to shut the door, throw in the towel or extinguish the fire that burns deep inside to pull on his No. 16 jersey again.

Unable to obtain clearance in January to return this season four months after he received his fourth concussion in a span of 18 months during training camp, the 31-year-old MacArthur travelled to Fort Myers, Fla., to give retirement a shot.

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In the first interview since he was denied clearance to play, MacArthur told Postmedia on Sunday that, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t walk away and that was why he was back in an attempt to see if he can resume his career even though, as far as the Ottawa Senators are concerned, he won’t be back this season.

“I basically, in all honesty, went to Florida to try and retire,” MacArthur said in an exclusive interview. “If I go out in Florida, no one cares about hockey, I thought this would make it easier to get away from it. That worked for about the first week. I thought the whole week that I had convinced myself to move on and do something different. I didn’t know what to do or where I was going with it, but I was just trying to check myself out of hockey.