New York Rangers Report Card: Libor Hajek

When the New York Rangers traded away Ryan McDonough and J.T. Miller to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the trade deadline last year, word is Jeff Gorton held on to Miller until Steve Yzerman agreed to add Libor Hajek to the deal.  A year later we got a small glimpse of his ability, but it wasn’t enough to take home a grade.

Libor Hajek –  Grade Incomplete

As we continue to work our way through the 2018-19 New York Rangers, it’s time to turn our attention to Libor Hajek who along with Filip Chytil are two young Czechs who are an important part of the New York Rangers rebuild.  While Chytil has already had an impact, Hajek played most of the season in the AHL, but in a brief audition on Broadway, he gave Ranger fans reasons for optimism.

His Season

Libor Hajek played most of the season with Hartford, before a late season call up to the Rangers. By most accounts he did not light it up for the Wolf Pack. In fact, if you look at his stats, there would be a clear indication that he struggled mightily at the AHL level.

In a sport where offensive statistics are king, in 58 games he never scored and had only five assists. He also finished minus 26, a real eye-catcher for a D-man who supposedly was the centerpiece of the Rangers’ deal with the Lightning. But if you look at it from a real ‘glass is half-full’ perspective you can imagine that a player with his talents could have spent a large part of his time on the ice covering for a lesser defensive partner.

Add in the fact that the Wolf Pack allowed the third most goals in the AHL and finished last in the Atlantic Division and you can make more sense of that number.

Regardless of what appear to be struggles in the AHL, the struggles clearly did not translate to the NHL. Although Libor Hajek only played five games for the New York Rangers at the NHL level before being sidelined by a shoulder injury, those five games were more than solid.

Coach David Quinn gave him a lot of ice time including 21:44 in the game before his injury.  It was a short major league test, but he scored his first professional goal, and was a plus one for those few games with a positive Corsi of 54.2%. One has to think that the AHL game just did not fit his style of play.

Hayek was stout on the defensive end, showed some real high level puck moving skills, and excellent skating ability. He definitely did not look overwhelmed or out-of-place in any way. That is nothing less than fantastic news for the Rangers.

Why the grade

Barely 21 years of age, Hajek is another one of the youngsters the Rangers are looking to grow as part of the rebuild.  At 6’2, 205 the physical growth has already taken place, it is now up to the coaching staff to grow his game.

It’s just not fair to grade a player based on five games at the NHL level, thus the Incomplete for his season grade. But all in all, those five games were pretty impressive. Hajek looks like he is ready to move full-time to the big stage.  Based on that potential alone, you can see the grading curve is already heading up.

The Stats

Games Played: 5
Goals: 1
Assists: 0
Plus/minusAHL Statistics
Games Played: 58
Goals: 0
Assts: 5
Plus/minus: