Three bounce back candidates for the New York Rangers
By Conor Power
Jaroslav Halak
This one is kind of sneaky because he wasn’t a Ranger last year, but he didn’t have a great year as a member of the Vancouver Canucks. Jaroslav Halak is going to need to try and rediscover the netminder he was before he went out to Western Canada. At 37 years old, that is far from a certainty, but he’s going to see game time with the Rangers and they will need him to perform in those games.
In 17 games, Halah had a 4-7-2 record with 2.96 goals against average and a .903 save percentage. That is just not good enough for an NHL goalie. You can make the case he was playing behind a Vancouver team that was not great on its own end, and that might be a compliment to them. Either way, he’s going to need to put up better numbers in New York with the Rangers this year.
He shouldn’t see too much game time seeing as the Rangers starter is still very young and capable of playing about 60 games a year, but if there is an injury to the great Russian shot-stopper the Rangers employ, the Slovakian netminder is going to be called upon and he could very much be the reason the Rangers sink or swim. He needs to be at least serviceable. That isn’t asking for too much.
If the Bratislava, Slovakia native doesn’t do well when the Rangers need him too, it could force them to overplay their starter. If he does really well, it could give the Rangers a chance to rest the reigning Vezina winner more than they otherwise might have because they will have had confidence in Halak. It’s unlikely he’ll play in the playoffs, but the effect he could have on the Rangers’ playoff run isn’t small.