The Rebirth of Marian Gaborik

In 2009, the Rangers signed Wild superstar Marian Gaborik to a free-agent deal, and everyone was very happy and anxious. Happy because this was going to be potentially the first step toward building the team up for a good future, and anxious because of his injury prone history.

In the 2009-10 season, Gaborik reached everyone's expectations by scoring 42 goals and 44 assists for 86 total points on the year. However, the lack of a supporting cast caused the Rangers to narrowly miss the playoffs on the last day of the season to the Flyers.

In 2010, the Rangers signed Alex Frolov, a potential centerman for Gaborik that could propel him to bigger points totals that could jump the Rangers over the playoff hump.  However, Gaborik's injury proneness came up again when he sat out 20 games to start the season, and only tallied 22 goals, his lowest total ever when playing more than 40 games in a season. Gaborik came back mid way through the season, but never got in a groove, and that caused many Rangers fans to think of him as another lost-cause signing made by the Rangers. The Rangers eventually made it to the 2011 playoffs that year, never got out of the first round. Gaborik only had one goal and one assist in the five game series against the Capitals.



In the summer of 2011, the Rangers went out and signed Brad Richards to really give Gaborik the center that could mold him back to form, and so far this season, he has done just that to help the Rangers reach 1st place in the NHL.

Gaborik's play hasn't been talked about much this season, and for reasons I do not get. His return to being a scoring threat has helped the Rangers in desperate times when a goal was needed. People don't take notice of Gaborik this year because they know his reputation is being a scorer, and figure this is what he is suppose to do, as they turn their attention to other players like Carl Hagelin or Ryan Callahan who aren't avid goal-scorers, but are having very good years as well.

Give Marian Gaborik some credit. He played through all of the fans of the Rangers calling for his head last season after under-performing with an injury, and came back this year and silenced his critics with his excellent play. We here at the Clinic would like to personally commend Marian Gaborik for his return to dominance. Being third in the league in goals is a helluva position that very few people can ever reach, and hold.Without his clutch goals, and drawing defenders to guard him as other players take the reigns to score, the Rangers would not be in first.