When the Rangers were eliminated from the playoffs back in 2024, Blake Wheeler wasn\u2019t sure whether he\u2019d want to come back and play another season.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t end up doing so, but the 39-year-old didn\u2019t end up staying away from hockey for long.<\/p>\n
Wheeler rejoined the Rangers Monday in a front-office role, taking the title of hockey operations advisor as part of a group of hirings and promotions announced by general manager Chris Drury.<\/p>\n
As part of that, Ryane Clowe returned to the Blueshirts as an assistant general manager.<\/p>\n
Blake Wheeler as a Ranger in 2023. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
Ryan Martin was promoted from assistant GM to associate GM, while Jim Sullivan was promoted to assistant GM.<\/p>\n
Martin will continue to hold the general manager title for AHL Hartford.<\/p>\n
Wheeler, who spent the bulk of his 16-year playing career with the Jets, where he was captain for six seasons, played in New York for just one season, taking part in 54 games before suffering a gruesome leg injury.<\/p>\n
Though the injury appeared to be season-ending, Wheeler worked his way back ahead of the when anyone thought he\u2019d be ready and got into Game 4 of the conference finals, skating 9:18 in the 3-2 overtime loss to Florida, which ended up being the last game of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everybody would take the three-month journey to work their way back in that situation,\u201d then-captain Jacob Trouba said at the time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat just speaks to the character of the man, of who he is. We saw how hard he worked the past three-plus months to come back and play and contribute to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Clowe, his previous tenure in New York included two years as a hockey operations advisor and a year as a co-senior advisor before leaving for San Jose, where he was an assistant general manager.<\/p>\n
He announced his resignation from his role with the Sharks in a statement Sunday, calling it an \u201cextremely difficult decision\u201d to leave a franchise with which he spent most of his playing career.<\/p>\n
Ryane Clowe during the 2013 NHL playoffs. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved being back in San Jose and working with [Sharks GM] Mike Grier and his entire team but at this point, this decision is in the best interest of my family,\u201d Clowe said in the statement. \u201cThe franchise has an exciting future ahead and is set up to be successful for a long period of time, and I am grateful to Mike and [team president] Jonathan Becher for giving me the opportunity to return to San Jose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sullivan, who is not related to coach Mike Sullivan, previously held the title of VP of hockey strategy and data management.<\/p>\n
Rangers GM Chris Drury in May 2025. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
He has worked for the Rangers for 17 seasons, starting as a video analyst in 2009.<\/p>\n
Martin joined the Rangers along with Drury in 2021 and worked 16 years for the Red Wings, including 11 as assistant GM, prior to that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Until now, Martin was the only assistant general manager under Drury, so having two assistants plus an associate GM will be a change to how the Rangers operate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Rangers were eliminated from the playoffs back in 2024, Blake Wheeler wasn\u2019t sure whether he\u2019d want…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4823,385,87278,99],"class_list":["post-142169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-ryane-clowe","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}