Jimmy Vesey’s second act on Broadway has been a smashing success with the prodigal winger earning a two-year contract extension halfway through the season after earning a spot on the roster off a training camp tryout.
Vesey II has not been surrounded by the hoopla that marked his debut season as a Blueshirt in 2016-17 after he signed as an unrestricted free agent out of Harvard with substantial top-six expectations.
Instead, No. 26 has embraced a support role even as the 29-year-old has played up and down the lineup and has rarely been on the fourth line, the spot for which he competed against Dryden Hunt and Julien Gauthier in camp.
Vesey’s success story is an exception to the rule of Rangers who have enjoyed a Broadway encore. Many came back for no more than a cup of coffee (or a tumbler of a favored beverage). Almost all had lesser roles with lesser profiles the second time around.
After spending his first three seasons with the Rangers, Jimmy Vesey shuttled to Buffalo, Toronto, Vancouver and New Jersey before returning to Broadway this season.Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesAll three young pieces from the 1979 finalists who went to Colorado in the Barry Beck trade — Pat Hickey, Lucien DeBlois and Mike McEwen — made their way back. Ron Duguay had an Act II. Real Lemieux, who was not a fit the first time, got a brief second chance in which he also made little impression.
Bronco Horvath was a Ranger both before and after he was a consequential NHL player in Boston. Two of the Czechmates — Petr Nedved and Jan Hlavac — served two tours of duty. Doug Soetaert ended his career here with a 13-game return a half-decade after his departure.
Defensemen Larry Brown, Matt Gilroy and Mike McMahon went and came, as did Jean-Guy Gendron. Sandy McCarthy returned as filler for the post-2004 deadline purge to fill the franchise’s ravaged roster that was the weakest since World War II.
Seriously, in a best-of-seven between the post-purge 2018 Blueshirts and the post-purge 2004 Rangers, 2018 takes it in a sweep.
Going back further, Phil Goyette, a linchpin of the club’s rise to respectability and prominence in the 1960s, was brought back to center Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield when Jean Ratelle broke his ankle in Game 63 of the 1971-72 season. At age 38, it went about as expected — 1-4-5 in eight regular-season contests, 1-3-4 in 13 matches in the tournament. No. 20 (who wore No. 9 this time) retired after the playoffs.
Phil Goyette’s brief return to the Rangers in 1972 to plug an injury-created hole in the lineup did not go as well as his first tenure with the team.Bettmann ArchiveThe young Mike Murphy, who never should have been traded once, was somehow traded twice by then-GM Emile Francis, who serendipitously had gotten the winger back from St. Louis late in 1972-73. He then sent him away for good less than two months into 1973-74 by including him in the deal with LA that brought Gilles Marotte that stands as one of The Cat’s most disastrous moves.
Again. There have not been many to make an impact upon their return. You say, “Alex Kovalev?” I say, “Catastrophe.”
The top 10 redux Rangers
Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Second Acts on Broadway:
1. Dave Balon: Traded to Montreal at age 26 with Gump Worsley in June 1963 as part of the blockbuster deal in which Jacques Plante, Goyette and Donnie Marshall came to New York. Balon, who had scored 16 goals in 117 games the first time around, returned in 1968-69 and became the original left wing on the Bulldog Line with Walter Tkaczuk and Billy Fairbairn. He recorded 83 goals in 245 games (including consecutive 30-goal seasons) before being sent to Vancouver in a deal for Gary (Okie) Doak early in 1971-72.
2. Dom Moore: Perhaps the Rangers’ all-time most effective and valuable fourth-line player. Kind of like Barclay Goodrow in his ability to produce anywhere in the lineup. Centered the rather famous HMO Line featuring Jed Ortmeyer and Ryan Hollweg in 2005-06 before he was dealt to Pittsburgh immediately after his rookie season, ostensibly because of contract issues. Eight teams later, Moore returned in 2013 for three years that included the 2014 trip to the final and the 2015 Presidents’ Trophy.
Dominic Moore was traded after his rookie season, but later helped the Rangers reach the Stanley Cup Final and earn the Presidents’ Trophy after he returned to the team in 2013.NHLI via Getty Images3. Esa Tikkanen: Had been an integral part of the 1994 Cup winners after having been acquired from Edmonton late the previous season in exchange for Doug Weight, the championship diminishing the ouch factor. Returned late in 1996-97 to play an important role in the club’s advance to the conference finals, scoring three times in the five-game first round against Florida, including the overtime winner in Games 3 and 5, then scoring four goals in the five-game victory over the Devils in Round 2. A second encore that landed him on Broadway after earning a job off a camp tryout in 1998-99 ended after 15 games.
4. Petr Nedved: Run out of town after one year following his addition in 1994-95 as part of the compensation package from St. Louis in the Mike Keenan tampering affair, the first New York center to wear No. 93 returned in a deal with Pittsburgh around Thanksgiving of 1998 in which Alex Kovalev went to Pittsburgh. Nedved became one of the faces of the club’s lengthy playoff drought, but he also was one of the club’s best players, recording 328 points (138-190) in 432 games during his second tour. He was dealt to Edmonton in the 2004 purge in a deal for Steve Valiquette, a deal MSG viewers are still paying for — I mean, benefiting from — all these years later.
5. Orland Kurtenbach: Perhaps the best and most feared fighter in franchise history, the center played 11 games for the Blueshirts at age 24 in 1960-61 before the Bruins claimed him in the intra-league draft. The Rangers got him back the same way in 1966-67, and Big Kurt was a foundational piece for Francis’ late ’60s group. One of the young chips in the middle that included Don Luce, Syl Apps, Jr. and Juha Widing behind Ratelle, Tkachuk and Goyette, Kurtenbach was claimed by Vancouver in the 1970 expansion draft before becoming the Canucks’ first captain.
6. Martin Rucinsky: A three-timer, acquired originally from Dallas in the deal that sent out Manny Malhotra in 2001-02, then as a free agent in both 2003 and 2005 (after leaving first as a free agent and next as part of a trade to Vancouver for the rights to R.J. Umberger), Rucinsky was a valuable piece on the 2005-06 team (16-39-55 in 53 games) that ended the franchise’s playoff drought at seven years.
Martin Rucinsky spent three separate terms with the Rangers over a 16-year career, and helped the Blueshirts reach the playoffs in 2005-06, his final season with the club.Getty Images7. Mark Messier: Returning as captain for the 2000-01 season after literally burying a hatchet in a press conference shtick with Garden president Dave Checketts, Messier’s second tour yielded four consecutive playoff misses before he retired after Season 25 in 2003-04. But No. 11’s second tour did bring back a measure of respectability for the team that had lost essentially all of its identity after The Captain was shoved out the door after 1996-97.
8. Nick Fotiu: The People’s Choice was lost to the Whalers in the 1979 WHA expansion draft that GM Fred Shero and his partner, Mickey Keating, totally botched. Fotiu spent two years in Hartford before returning for another five-season run for his hometown team, thus getting the opportunity to fling another hundreds of pucks into the blue seats after warmups.
9. Vesey: Not through the first season, another two to go.
Mark Messier wasn’t able to get the Rangers back into the playoffs when he returned as a free agent in 2000, but he was able to lend an air of stability to the club.Getty Images10. Sean Avery: It did not help that Avery came back to play for a coach in John Tortorella who detested just about everything about his persona, and it is certainly true that No. 16 did not have anywhere near the impact he had when embraced by Jaromir Jagr and Tom Renney through his first stint, which included playoff victories over Atlanta and the Devils and a feud with Martin Brodeur. But he was a reasonably important part of two playoff teams during his second run before Tortorella helped orchestrate his exile early in the 2011-12 season. There was that 2010-11 opening night when the winger had assists on all of Derek Stepan’s hat-trick goals in the center’s NHL debut.
