Carson Babbini | May 18th, 2019
The New York Rangers have found their replacement for their longtime president Glen Sather yesterday, as the team announced that John Davidson will be the next team president. The move comes after Davidson resigned from the same position with the Columbus Blue Jackets early Friday.
Davidson had served as the president of hockey operations as well as the alternate governor for the Blue Jackets since 2012 after starting his front office experience with the St. Louis Blues in 2006 and was there for six years before joining the Blue Jackets.
For Davidson, this is a great chance to come back to an organization that he is very familiar with. Davidson, a goaltender in his playing days, played for the Rangers for eight years during his ten year NHL career. Drafted by the Blues with the fifth overall pick of the 1973 NHL Draft, Davidson ended up playing in 34 games during his rookie year with a record of 13-19-7 with a 3.08 goals against average and a .902 save percentage, which put him fifth in the Calder Trophy race in the 1973-74 season, an award that was won by Denis Potvin of the New York Islanders. On June 18th, 1975, Davidson was traded to the Rangers, along with right winger Bill Collins in exchange for right winger Jerry Butler, and left-wingers Ted Irvine and Bert Wilson. In his first year in the Big Apple, Davidson played in 56 games with a record of 22-28-5 with a 3.97 goals against average and a .879 save percentage. In his time with the Rangers, Davidson had a record of 93-90-25 with a 3.58 goals against average and a .884 save percentage. For his NHL career, Davidson finished with a 123-124-39 record, a 3.53 goals against average, and a .887 save percentage.
Davidson won’t be able to celebrate his homecoming for too long as he will have quite a bit of work to do for the Rangers. The Rangers hold the second overall pick in this year’s draft, and are in the midst of a massive rebuild. However, they will have a massive amount of cap space for free agency, and resigning their free agents including Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Lemieux among others. With a rich free agency class this year, Davidson will have a great chance to start his era off right.
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