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New York Rangers’ Martin St. Louis Should Contemplate Early Retirement (Video)

BySteven Carollo|

New York Rangers’ Martin St. Louis should seriously contemplate retiring earlier than expected after this miserable postseason he is currently having.

New York Rangers‘ 39 year old winger, Martin St. Louis, had a very up and down regular season.  Filled with a lot of hot and cold streaks, St. Louis ultimately still proved to be a serviceable player, finishing the regular season 4th on the Rangers in points with 52 and tied for 2nd on the team in goals scored with 21.

Regardless of St. Louis’ inconsistent regular season, his time to shine has always been in the playoffs, and after last season how St. Louis helped carry the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final, after the tragic passing of his mother right before Mother’s Day last year, many Rangers’ fans, and I’m sure the entire team as well, expected to see an even more motivated St. Louis, to step up and help lead the Rangers to another Stanley Cup Final, only this time finish the job and win it all.

However, that has been very far from the case.

New York Rangers
New York Rangers

New York Rangers

In the Rangers’ 14 postseason games thus far in 2014-15, St. Louis has 0 goals and just 6 assists.  Not only is St. Louis not scoring any goals but is failing to produce any offense whatsoever and is making some horrible decisions out there on the ice.  Every game St. Louis seems to make either a blind pass that is turned over in the middle of the ice or makes a weak pass up the boards that gets intercepted before reaching the point man.

To top things off, the epitome of St. Louis horrid postseason, up to this point, came last game in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals vs. the
Tampa Bay Lightning, a game in which the Rangers were embarrassed by a 6-2 final score.

In the early stages of the 1st period in Game 2, when the score was 0-0, the Rangers were on a 5 on 3 power play with St. Louis playing the point.  Defenseman, Dan Boyle, sent him a pass, that granted was not the best pass in the world, however, St. Louis somehow was not able to just kick the puck from his skates to his stick and instead fell down.  This led to a 5 on 3 shorthanded breakaway, where the Lightning’s red hot
Tyler Johnson shot the puck, Rangers’ starting goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, made the pad save, but at the exact moment of Lundqvist’s save, St. Louis, who was back-checking Johnson on his breakaway, dove to try to knock the puck away before Johnson shot the puck but instead was late and ended up colliding into Lundqvist, knocking the puck into his own net, and giving the Lightning an early 1-0 lead.

Have a look at the play by clicking on the video below:

Absolutely nothing seems to be going right for St. Louis this postseason and it only seems to be getting worse.

I know St. Louis has expressed that even with his contract expiring this summer that he wants to play at least another season and wants to retire a Ranger.  Unfortunately, with the way St. Louis has looked his age and then some this season, especially during the playoffs, I do not see any way with the Rangers’ salary cap situation that they would resign him, even if he takes the major pay cut to resign with the Rangers like he said he would.

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In my opinion, St. Louis’ time in the NHL is up and he seriously needs to contemplate retirement after the conclusion of this season.  His inability to score goals, along with Rick Nash, are the major reasons why the Rangers’ season could very well end in the Eastern Conference Finals, failing to reach the Stanley Cup Final for the 2nd straight season, and once again failing to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup.

Next: New York Rangers Are Doomed If Rick Nash Does Not Score

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