Bernie Nicholls’ time with the Rangers was brief, but it packed a punch.
By the time the New York deal came down on January 20, 1990, Nicholls had already built a reputation as one of the league’s elite scorers. He had just come off a 70-goal season with the Los Angeles Kings, where he’d spent his best offensive stretch skating with Wayne Gretzky.
So when the trade hit during the 1990 NHL All-Star Game, it landed hard. Nicholls had gone into the event expecting to represent Los Angeles, and Kings owner Bruce McNall had told him he wasn’t going anywhere.
Then goaltender Mike Vernon delivered the news: Nicholls was headed to the Rangers for Tomas Sandstrom and Tony Granato.
Nicholls was stunned, and for good reason. He was leaving the team where he had put together the most explosive scoring run of his career, and he was also saying goodbye to Gretzky.
Still, he adjusted quickly. He asked NHL officials to introduce him as a Ranger during the All-Star Game, saying that’s who he was now.
New York got immediate production from the move. Nicholls scored 12 goals and finished with 37 points in 32 games, helping the Rangers get into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Their run didn’t last long, though. Washington knocked them out in five games in the second round, fueled by John Druce’s nine-goal series.
Nicholls stayed for a full season the next year and kept producing. In 1990-91, he put up 73 points in 71 games and remained one of the Rangers’ top offensive threats. Even so, the Capitals were back in the way, eliminating New York in the opening round.
That ended his run in New York almost as soon as it had started. One game into the 1991-92 season, the Rangers made one of the biggest trades in franchise history, landing Mark Messier and Jeff Beukeboom from the Edmonton Oilers and sending Nicholls, Louie DeBrusk, Steven Rice, and David Shaw the other direction. By the end of his Rangers stint, Nicholls had totaled 110 points, with 37 goals and 73 assists, and showed he could produce wherever he was placed.
After that, Nicholls kept evolving. While Messier delivered the championship payoff in New York, Nicholls became a more complete two-way forward.
He later reached the Conference Finals with the Oilers, Devils, and Blackhawks, though none of those runs got him to the Stanley Cup Final. In New Jersey, he also became the 39th player in NHL history to reach 1,000 career points in 1994.
He finished his NHL career with the San Jose Sharks, where he worked as a fourth-line checking center before being released early in the 1998-99 season. Across 1,127 games, Nicholls scored 475 goals and added 734 assists for 1,209 points, which ranked 27th on the NHL’s all-time scoring list at the time he retired.
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