New York Rangers Recent Years

The Rangers continued to be Cup favorites in the mid-to-late 1990s, even landing an aging Wayne Gretzky, but they would fizzle out. Their 1994 stars were aging and many retired or dropped off in performance. After General Manager Neil Smith ran Messier out of town in the summer of 1997 and failed in a bid to replace him with Avalanche superstar Joe Sakic, the Rangers began a streak of seven seasons without making the playoffs.

In March 2000, Smith was fired along with head coach John Muckler, and that summer James Dolan hired Glen Sather to replace him. By 2001, the Rangers had landed a lot of star power. Theoren Fleury joined the Rangers after spending most of his career with the Calgary Flames. Eric Lindros joined the Rangers from the Philadelphia Flyers. They got Pavel Bure late in the 2001-02 season from the Florida Panthers. However, the Rangers still finished out of the playoffs despite having the league's highest payroll. Later years saw other stars such as Alexei Kovalev, Jaromir Jagr, Anson Carter and Bobby Holik added, but in 2002-03 and 2003-04, the team again missed the playoffs. Owners of the highest team payroll with numerous star players coupled with their consistent failure to make the post-season has earned the Rangers the honor of being the NHL's poster child for underachievers.

Towards the end of the 2003-04 season, Sather finally gave in to a rebuilding process, and traded away Leetch, Kovalev, and eight others for numerous prospects and draft picks. Bure & Messier are now retired, while Lindros signed with the Maple Leafs prior to the 2005-06 season.

The post lock-out Rangers, under new head coach Tom Renney, have seen the team move away from the high priced veterans for recent years towards a group of young talented players such as Petr Prucha, Dominic Moore and Blair Betts but the focus of the team remains superstar Jaromir Jagr. The Rangers were largely expected to struggle during 2005/06 but behind stellar performances by Swedish rookie goalie Henrik Lundqvist, surprising Czech rookie Petr Průcha, Martin Straka, and Jagr, the Rangers are currently at the top of the Atlantic Division with fewer than 10 games left, boasting their best record since 1995-96.

On March 29, 2006, Jaromir Jagr broke the Rangers' single season points record with a first period assist in a 5-1 win against the New York Islanders. The assist gave him 110 points on the season breaking Jean Ratelle's record. With seven games to go, Jagr has 115 points and will look to add more in the final two weeks of the season.

On April 4, 2006, the Rangers defeated the Philadelphia Flyers in a shootout 3-2 to clinch a playoff spot for the first time since the 1996-97 season.