Past their prime
Believe it or not, six of the top 16 players form Quebec province have played for the Rangers. In fact, there are seven Quebecois in the Hall of Fame who wore a Rangers uniform. Unfortunately, all except Gilbert and Ratelle came to New York when they were past their prime.
Marcel Dionne
Ask a hockey fan who the greatest French-Canadian hockey player was and the answer you will get will be Mario Lemieux, but Marcel Dionne sits at the top of the career list with 731 goals and 1,771 points. Dionne played the last two years of his career in New York after 15 seasons in Detroit and Los Angeles. He is a native of Drummondville, Quebec.
Acquired in a trade for Bobby Carpenter, Dionne scored 31 goals as a 36-year old in 1987-88, but retired mid-season the next year after scoring only seven goals. As an NHL immortal, his final season was a disappointment. After a slow start the team sent him to Denver in the International League to get into shape. The Rangers said it was his choice, but he chose to retire after playing nine games in the minor leagues. It was an ignominious end to a Hall of Fame career. He was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 1992.
Martin St. Louis
Martin St. Louis was a native of Laval, Quebec who had a brief, but glorious stop in New York. Traded to the Rangers in 2014, he helped them to the Stanley Cup Finals that year and served as an inspiration to the team. He was already 38 when the team got him, but was just two years removed from winning the Art Ross scoring trophy.
After the Stanley Cup run in 2014 he only played one more season, scoring 21 goals in 74 games. He chose to retire after the team was ousted in the Eastern Conference Finals by the team he was traded from, the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2018.
Guy Lafleur
The comeback of Guy Lafleur was one of the most fascinating stories of the 1980s NHL. In 14 years with the Montreal Canadiens he led the league in scoring three times, won the Hart Trophy twice and was a first team all-star six times. He won five Stanley Cups, retiring in 1984, 19 games into the season. His retirement was a shock to everyone in Montreal He had only two goals in 19 games and was stifled by coach Jacques Lemaire’s defensive system, but was still a gifted player. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1988.
Imagine the surprise when he announced that he was attempting a comeback with the Rangers in 1988. At age 37 and having not played an NHL game in almost four years, he went on to score 18 goals and 45 points in 67 games for the Blueshirts.
One highlight of his season was his first game against the Canadiens, a 4-2 loss at Madison Square Garden. Lafleur scored his fifth goal of the season, assisted by Marcel Dionne.
That was overshadowed in his first game back at the Montreal Forum on February 4, 1989. Although the Rangers lost by a 7-5 score, Lafleur electrified the crowd with two goals to give the Rangers a 5-2 lead. Montreal went on to score five straight goals to win, but it was an amazing performance by a great player. On a note of trivia, a Ranger player named Jason Lafrenière assisted on Lafleur’s first goal. Jason is not related to the newest Lafrenière on the Rangers.
The Flower only played one season in New York, going on to play two more seasons with the Quebec Nordiques before retiring for good after the 1990-91 season.
Luc Robitaille
The Rangers traded for “Lucky” Luc Robitaille when he was in his prime at age 29. He had scored 23 goals in the strike shortened 1994-95 season for the Penguins and the Rangers gave up Sergei Zubov and Petr Nedved for Robitaille and defenseman Ulf Samuelsson.
When he came to New York, Robitaille was one of the most prolific left wingers in NHL history. He averaged 49 goals in eight season with the Los Angeles Kings and when he was acquired before the 1995-96 season, expectations were high.
What followed was a fiasco. Robitaille scored 23 goals in hist first season and 24 goals in his second and last season in New York. After four 100 point seasons in L.A., the best he could do in New York was 69 points. They sent him back to the Kings after his second season in a trade for Kevin Stevens.
Of course, in the next four years, the Montreal native rebounded to score over 30 goals each year including 39 in his first season away from the Rangers. He retired in 2006, behind only Dionne and Lemieux in career goals by Quebec natives. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009.
Bernie GeoffrionBernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion was a right wing with a booming shot, hence the nickname. Born in Montreal, he played 14 years for the Canadiens before being claimed on waivers by the Rangers in 1966. A former 50 goal score and Hart Trophy winner, Geoffrion played two seasons in New York scoring 22 goals, but was unable to show the spark that he had when he won six Stanley Cups with the Habs.
When Emile Francis brought him to New York, he had an ulterior motive, naming Geoffrion the coach for the 1968-69 season, right after his retirement. Francis replaced him as coach after only 43 games as he led the team to a 22-18-3 record. It wasn’t his coaching that caused him to step down, it was a duodenal ulcer that sidelined him and hindered him in subsequent coaching stints in Atlanta and Montreal. Geoffrion was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player in 1972.