Straka NOT On His Way Out…For Now

By Rob Abruzzese on June 26th, 2008 2:44 PM
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Hockey, Rangers Rumors & News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Martin Straka will not play for the Rangers or in the NHL next year. Definitely. Maybe. Who knows?

Last night Straka’s former club in the Czech Republic, HC Lasselsberger Plzen, announced that they had Martin Strakareached an agreement with the winger.

“We struck a deal with Martin last night,” club president Tomas Kral said. The agreement called for to not only play for the team but also serve as a sports director.

But today the agent for the soon to be 36-year-old vet has said differently.

”Marty has made it clear that he will wait until after July 1 to evaluate all his options and make an informed decision at that time,” Ritch Winter, Straka’s longtime agent said.

”Plzen has made an aggressive offer but it’s just one of the offers he will be considering,” said Winter, who added there was also interest from teams in Russia and Sweden.

July 1 is obviously the day when NHL teams other than the Rangers can make offers to the player with 257 career goals. Teams from other countries can make offers at any time. According to his agent there are teams in the NHL, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Sweden interested in him.

It’s understandable that Straka would have interest from teams in other countries, but after the season he’s just had I don’t see too many NHL teams lining up to sign him. Averaging nearly a point a game in the two years since the lockout Straka was a major player for the Rangers. But he had a disappointing 2008 season and is part of the reason the team struggled offensively for most of the year.

A combination of injuries and being relegated to the third line for most of the year accounted for the reasons why he only managed 41 points last year. Had he been healthy and playing on Jaromir Jagr’s line for the entire year perhaps his numbers would have done better, but with his age and the salary cap there isn’t much reason to expect the Rangers to bring him back.

He did go out on a high note, in 10 playoff games Straka put up decent numbers. He had three goals and seven assists. Most of that success came from playing along side Jagr who had a more impressive 15 points in the playoffs.

Straka has a history with HC Lasselsberger Plzen. He played for them before coming over to the NHL and also during the 04/05 work stoppage.

There is currently one response to “Straka NOT On His Way Out…For Now”

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  1. 1 On June 26th, 2008, gozer said:

    Good news! I thought it sounded suspicious that Straka would have committed to a team before Jagr made his move.

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