Glen Sather once joked that if he had the same budget at the Rangers that he’d win the Stanley Cup every year. The line aged badly, and nowhere does that feel clearer than the Bobby Holík signing, a deal that still stands as the biggest financial mistake in Rangers history.
The Rangers made their move during the franchise’s late-1990s and early-2000s “Dark Ages,” betting big on a player who had made his name across the river with the Devils. Holík was the 10th overall pick in 1989 by the Hartford Whalers, but he is best known for his 11 seasons in New Jersey, where he played 786 games, scored 202 goals and added 270 assists for 472 points.
After his age-31 season, Holík hit free agency, and the Rangers went after the 6'4", 230-pound center with a five-year, $45 million contract. At $9 million per year, it was a massive commitment in the pre-salary-cap era, built on the idea that he would bring grit, toughness and more offense with increased ice time.
That logic looked clean on paper. Holík had averaged 23 goals and 57 points from 1996-97 through 2002 while playing just 16:55 a night, so the hope was that a bigger role in New York would unlock even more production. Instead, the fit never came close to matching the price.
His first season with the Rangers produced 16 goals, 19 assists and 35 points in 64 games, a drop of .12 points per game from the previous year in New Jersey. He bounced back somewhat in 2003-04 with 25 goals, 31 assists and 56 points, but that ended up being his final season with the Blueshirts.
The 2004-05 season was lost to the NHL lockout, and when the league returned in 2005-06 with a salary cap, existing contracts were cut by 24% to help teams get under the limit. That dropped Holík’s cap hit to $6.726 million per season, but even that number was too steep for what he was providing. The Rangers bought out the final two years of the deal.
What looked like a manageable cleanup at the time has become a lasting symbol of waste. Holík’s contract is still one of the moves critics point to when they talk about why the cap era arrived in the first place. For a player with his resume, the whole thing never made much sense, and it ended with the Rangers paying him to leave.
Holík went on to play three seasons with the Atlanta Thrashers, where he recorded 96 points in 228 games, before finishing his career with one final season back in New Jersey in 2008-09.
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