10 best free agent signings in New York Rangers history
By Steve Paulus
#3 and #2: Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg (1978)
Hedberg and Nilsson. They are joined at the hip.
Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson were two of the first Europeans to come to North America and they joined Bobby Hull to form one of the most feared lines in the WHA. Hedberg and Nilsson spent four seasons with the Winnipeg Jets as perennial All-Stars.
They both became free agents in the summer of 1978 and Rangers general manager John Ferguson made them the highest paid players in the NHL as they signed two-year contracts for $475,000 a season.
Hedberg gets the nod as the second best free agent signee because of his longevity. He spent seven years on Broadway. Aside from 1981-82 when a knee injury limited him to only four games, Hedberg played 461 out of a possible 480 games.
He scored 172 goals and had 397 points, topping the 30 goal mark four times in seven years. He capped a brilliant career by winning the Masterton Trophy in 1985. He was a clutch playoff performer, with 46 points in 58 games and reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in 1979.
Ulf Nilsson was a great player, but his career is really a question of what he could have achieved if he had not suffered a couple of devastating injuries. Due to those injuries, Nilsson missed 150 games over his four seasons on Broadway.
Nilsson was an outstanding playmaker and he had a fabulous start as a Ranger. In his debut season he had scored 27 goals and had 66 points in only 59 games when he suffered a severely broken ankle. While he blamed a rut in the the bad Garden ice, Ranger fans have always blamed Denis Potvin who threw the check that led to the injury.
To make matters worse, the Rangers fell short in the 1979 playoffs, losing to the Montreal Canadiens in the Finals. Although Nilsson returned for the last two games, he was a shell of himself and Ranger fans can only speculate what a healthy Nilsson would have meant to that team.
It was that body check by Denis Potvin in February 1979 that led to the “Potvin sucks” chant which is now tradition at Madison Square Garden.
In the 1980-81 season, injuries limited him to only 51 games. He starred in the playoffs with eight goals and had eight assists in 14 games. The Rangers made it to the third round where they were swept by their arch-rivals New York Islanders who were to go on to win their second of four straight Cups.
He suffered what amounted to a career ending knee injury while playing for Team Sweden at the 1981 Canada Cup. He missed the entire 1981-82 season and returned to only play ten more games for the Rangers before retiring in 1983 at the age of 32.