5 infamous Rangers injuries after Adam Fox lands on IR

Gilbert’s Hall of Fame career almost never happened because of a couple of serious back injuries.

The first came in 1960, when he was playing for Guelph in his third season of junior hockey. Gilbert stepped on a piece of debris on the ice, fell back into the boards and broke a vertebra. He was temporarily paralyzed. Corrective surgery led to hemorrhaging in his leg, and there was fear that he might lose his leg.

“I stepped on a piece of debris on the ice and cracked my fourth vertebrae and was paralyzed for two months,” Gilbert told The Hockey News in 2011. “A possibly career-ending injury. (They) took me to the Mayo Clinic and performed a spinal fusion.”

However, he recovered and by the mid-1960s was an NHL regular in New York.

However, he still had pain – and in 1965–66, his career was nearly derailed when he went through a second spinal fusion operation. This time, the operation was performed by Dr. Kazuo Yanagisawa. Gilbert missed the second half of the season, but was as good as new in 1966–67 and scored 28 goals to help the Rangers advance to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in five years.

From there, of course, Gilbert went on to become the Rangers’ all-time leader in goals (406) and points (1,021). He was a Second-Team NHL All-Star in 1967-68 and a First-Team All-Star in 1971-72, when he had NHL career highs with 43 goals and 97 points. He retired in 1977, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame five years later and was known as “Mr. Ranger” as much for his post-career work with the team as for his on-ice performance – which nearly never took place.

Ratelle, Gilbert’s boyhood buddy, was having the greatest season in Rangers history in 1971-72, until teammate Dale Rolfe abruptly ended it.

Ratelle was battling for the NHL scoring lead with Boston Bruins star Phil Esposito when the California Golden Seals came to the Garden on March 1, 1972. The Seals were awful – the Rangers had beaten them 12-1 on Nov. 21, 1971, and Rangers fans were expecting another blowout.

Sure enough, the Rangers led 3-0 after the first period, though Ratelle didn’t have any points. Even worse was what happened in the second period, when Rolfe, Brad Park’s defense partner, fired a shot from the point. Ratelle was in front of the net looking for a deflection, but the puck hit the inside of his ankle and left him with a broken bone in his foot.

Ratelle, the center who made the “GAG Line” go, ended his season with 46 goals and 109 points in just 63 games. No Rangers player had more points in a season until Jaromir Jagr put up 123 in 2005-06. Artemi Panarin’s 120-point performance last season is the only other one to top Ratelle.

Without their No. 1 center, the Rangers ended up finishing second to the Bruins in the East Division. He didn’t play in the Rangers’ six-game win against the Montreal Canadiens in the Quarterfinals or the sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks in the Semifinals. Ratelle did return for the Final against the Bruins, but was a shell of himself – his only point was an assist in Game 1, when he won a face-off back to Gilbert for a goal in a 6-5 loss.

Ratelle made a full recovery in the offseason and had two more seasons with 90-plus points before the Rangers sent him to Boston along with Park on Nov. 7, 1975. The controversial trade brought Esposito and defenseman Carol Vadnais to New York. He retired in 1981 and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The chant of “Potvin Sucks” still echoes through Madison Square Garden during Rangers games, if not as loudly as it did long ago. Younger fans may have no idea what it refers to – but to generations of older fans, the hit New York Islanders defenseman Denis Potvin made on Rangers center Ulf Nilsson on Feb. 25, 1979, is something they’ll never forget.

Nilsson, fellow Swede Anders Hedberg and Bobby Hull of the Winnipeg Jets were the best line in the World Hockey Association in the mid-to-late 1970s. Nilsson led the WHA in assists in 1976-77 and 1977-78, had at least 114 points in each of his four seasons with the Jets and helped them win the Avco Cup in 1976 and 1978. He and Hedberg became free agents in the summer of 1978, and the Rangers threw big money at each to get them to come to New York and play in the NHL.

Though Nilsson didn’t put up the huge numbers he’d had in the WHA, he did total 27 goals and 65 points in his first 57 games with the Rangers, and added an assist on Hedberg’s first-period goal against the Islanders on the last Sunday in February. But his career was never the same after he was nailed by Potvin, the Islanders’ captain, who checked him into the end boards.

Nilsson broke his ankle from the check when his skate got caught in a crevice in the ice, making him take the brunt of the hit on his one leg. He missed the rest of the regular season and all but two games of the Rangers run to the Stanley Cup Final – which included an upset win over the Islanders in the Semifinals.

Though Rangers fans never forgave Potvin, Nilsson said the bad ice at Madison Square Garden was the real culprit.

“He was a great hockey player […] He was always fair,” Nilsson said of Potvin in 2009, according to The New York Times. “But the ice was never great in the Garden because they had basketball and other events. My foot got caught. It was a freak thing.”

Nilsson was never the same player he’d been before the injury, not helped by sustaining a knee injury when playing for Sweden in the 1981 Canada Cup that cost him all of the 1981-82 season. He played just 10 games in 1982-83 before his NHL career was over – leaving Rangers fans to wonder what his career would have been like had he not broken his ankle.

Tkaczuk, the first NHL player born in Germany (though he grew up in Canada) was one of the League’s best No. 2 centers through the early 1970s. One of his biggest assignments was to keep a lid on Phil Esposito when the Rangers played the Boston Bruins.

“I’ve never run into anyone tougher. Ever,” Esposito said of Tkaczuk, who held him without a goal in the 1972 Stanley Cup Final, although the Bruins won the series in six games. 

Walt was selected to the NHL All-Star Game in 1969-70, had five consecutive seasons (1969-70 through 1973-74) with at least 21 goals and 63 points, and was among the League’s best penalty-killers. He was also a key player in 1979, when the Rangers upset the New York Islanders to advance to the Stanley Cup Final ,where they lost on five games to the Montreal Canadiens.

He was still an effective player at age 33 when his hockey career came to a sudden end.

Tkaczuk was named Rangers captain in the fall of 1980 and having a solid season (six goals, 28 points, plus-13 in 43 games) when they took the ice against the Los Angeles Kings on Feb. 2, 1981. Toward the end of the 3-2 victory, Tkaczuk was hit in the eye by a puck. Visors were almost unheard of back then, and though Tkaczuk originally was expected to miss a few weeks at most, it wound up ending his career.

Tkaczuk ended his career with 678 points (227 goals, 451 assists) in 945 games. His plus-184 is still the best in Rangers history.

Leetch became the greatest defenseman in Rangers history despite a host of early-career injuries.

The most notable came in February 1993, when he broke his right ankle after getting out of a taxi. Leetch, who had won the Norris Trophy in 1991-92, the first Ranger defenseman to do so since Harry Howell 25 years earlier, reportedly slipped on a patch of ice as he was getting out of a cab in front of his apartment.

The loss of their star defenseman was a huge blow to the Rangers, who were struggling to make the playoffs one season after finishing first in the NHL with 105 points. Without him, they failed to make the postseason, leading GM Neil Smith to bring in Mike Keenan as coach for the 1993-94 season.

The ankle injury came just 10 days after he had returned to the lineup after missing 34 games due to a stretched nerve in his neck and left shoulder. Leetch suffered that injury when he missed a check and slid head-first into the boards at St. Louis on Dec. 17, 1992. He had been expected to miss six weeks due to the neck injury, but the nerve damage caused weakness in the shoulder and kept him out for almost three months.

It was Leetch’s second broken ankle in three years; he broke his left ankle just prior to the playoffs in 1990 and didn’t play again that season. The Rangers finished first in the Patrick Division in 1989-90, but without their top defenseman were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Semifinals by the Washington Capitals.

Happily, Leetch was ready to go when the 1993-94 season began. He wound up becoming the first United States-born player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP when he helped the Rangers to their first championship since 1940. He is second on the Rangers’ all-time scoring list with 981 points and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009.