Grabner open to rejoining Blueshirts as free agent
Michael Grabner already went through weeks of highstress thinking about things he couldn’t control — mainly, where the Rangers were going to trade him.
So now that the speedy winger has landed in New Jersey as part of the first-ever trade between the Devils and Rangers — also becoming one of the rare few to have played for all three New York-area hockey teams — he doesn’t want to start thinking about his pending unrestricted free agency that is likely to come July 1.
Which is not to say that he’s not interested in reuniting with the Rangers.
“I’m open,” Grabner told The Post before the Devils beat the league-leading Lightning, 2-1, on Saturday night in Newark. “I haven’t thought about it, but I’m open to anything. I’m trying to play out my season here, try to have the best possibility of my play here the rest of the year, then see what happens after.”
The Rangers had off Sunday and are playing out the rest of their season in the midst of a rebuild, set to miss the playoffs for the first time in seven years as they prepare for a home-and-home with the Capitals beginning on Monday night at the Garden. A reuniting with Grabner is a possibility if the price is right — same can be said for Rick Nash — but general manager Jeff Gorton is very unlikely to give out a deal over two years to a veteran.
Grabner will be 31 years old when next season starts, and the Austrian Express has fond memories of playing for the Blueshirts, with whom he resurrected his career on what turned out to be a terrifically discounted price of two years at $3.3 million. He had been coming off a season with the Maple Leafs when he scored nine goals in 80 games, and the offers weren’t exactly flooding in. He took the deal from the Rangers, then scored 27 goals in his first year on Broadway and followed up with 25 more in the 59 games he played for them this season before the Feb. 23 trade.
He certainly earned himself a substantial raise, and this summer is going to be very different for him com- pared to two years ago.
“Even last time when I was a free agent, it was a different situation back then, coming off a tough year,” he said. “But I didn’t really think about it until my season was over, then you worry about this kind of stuff.”
Grabner shook his head when thinking about his final few weeks with the Rangers. It was a miserable time for the players after management sent out a memo to the fans on Feb. 8 declaring their intention to rebuild. Every day Grabner was reminded of what seemed like an inevitable trade.
Finally, as he was held out of a game in Montreal on Feb. 22, he found out he had been traded to the Devils in exchange for a secondround pick and 20-year-old defensive prospect Yegor Rykov. His reaction?
“I was glad it was over. That was my first reaction,” Grabner said. “It was a long couple weeks before that, just trying to think about it, plan it out. But obviously you get reminded of it quite a bit with fans, family, friends. But I was just glad it was over.”