Much of the hockey community was taken back last August when New York Rangers general manager Glen Sather announced that the club had signed Czech veteran Vaclav “Vinny” Prospal.
At the time, Prospal himself had been taken back, not to mention embarrassed, when his then-current club, the Tampa Bay Lightning, had bought out the final three years of his four-year, $14 million contract.
Some were surprised that Prospal would sign with the Rangers, since his relationship with Blueshirts head coach John Tortorella was tenuous at best when the latter coached the former as a member of the Lightning.
Yet, it was a series of conversations with the fiery bench boss that convinced Prospal, notorious for a consistently fluctuating career trend of one good season followed by one bad season followed by one good season, and so forth, to come to Broadway on the cheap.
At the bargain basement price of $1.1 million, the 35-year-old seemed like quite a value, especially since the aforementioned career trend seemed to prognosticate a successful season for the tanned Abercrombie & Fitch devotee .
The Prospal bell curve did ...
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Article written by Broadway Hockey Daily
New York Rangers Report Card: Vaclav Prospal
April 30th, 2010 by Broadway Hockey Daily Leave a reply »
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