The New York Rangers are graded on the massive signings they made during 2025 NHL Free Agency to cap off the offseason.

Almost three years after he last played an NHL game, goalie Jaroslav Halak is calling it a career. Halak, 40, is retiring from hockey with immediate effect, he told Tomas Prokop of Dennik Sport in his home country of Slovakia per a Friday morning social media post. The goalie spent 17 seasons in the NHL split between seven teams.

A front-loaded schedule, which features 23 road games of the first 41, will lead into a second half that includes a seven-game home stand at the end of March into early April. All four meetings with the Islanders are before the March 6 trade deadline. All three meetings with the Devils are after the trade deadline.

That next opportunity never came for Halak, who officially retired as a professional player Friday. The 40-year-old goalie finished his NHL career with a 295-189-69 record, 2.50 goals-against average, .915 save percentage and 53 shutouts over 17 seasons.

After two seasons as an assistant in New York, Muse is now the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who open the 2025-26 season against the Rangers on Oct. 7. Behind the other bench, Mike Sullivan — who spent the past decade coaching the Penguins — will be making his debut with the Rangers.

The name Mike Richter is well-known among hockey fans. Richter spent 15 years in the National Hockey League as a goalie for the New York Rangers, including in 1994 when he was a fixture in the net during the team’s Stanley Cup winning season.

The beginning of the NHL’s next collective bargaining agreement brings to an end the possibility that a former Zamboni driver or an accountant who plays beer league hockey could enter a game in the league.

It was the second time the NHL held the Broadcast Training Camp, which is part of the League's ongoing commitment to off-ice player development that began with the 2013 creation of the NHL/NHLPA Player Orientation Program.