Winger Blake Wheeler has all but officially decided on retirement, as Paul Friesen of The Winnipeg Sun relays. Neither Wheeler nor the NHL Players’ Association has released a statement. Still, the former Jets captain told Dan Leffelaar of the Beyond High Performance podcast earlier this week that “there’s only so much gas in the tank” emotionally for an 82-game regular season.
In July, Wheeler, 38, hit unrestricted free agency after completing a one-year, $1.1MM contract with the Rangers. He joined the Blueshirts for the final season of his NHL career after having the captaincy stripped from him in Winnipeg in 2022 and seeing the final season of his five-year, $41.25MM contract with an $8.25MM cap hit bought out a year later. There wasn’t much buzz around his services on the UFA market aside from a report in August from Shawn Hutcheon of The Fourth Period that the Bruins were considering extending him a professional tryout. One way or another that never came to fruition, and Wheeler didn’t appear with any club during training camp.
A serious leg injury sustained in February ended his final regular season prematurely. However, he did return to the active roster near the end of New York’s second-round playoff win over the Hurricanes. He was a frequent healthy scratch upon returning to the lineup, though, with a lone postseason appearance against the Panthers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final likely standing as his final NHL appearance. In 54 regular-season appearances with the Rangers, he posted nine goals and 12 assists for 21 points with a +2 rating while averaging a career-low 12:43 per game.
Wheeler was a highly touted prospect. In the 2004 draft, the Coyotes selected him fifth overall, immediately after eventual longtime teammate Andrew Ladd was taken off the board by the Hurricanes. However, he opted not to sign in Phoenix. He took the long route through college at the University of Minnesota before becoming a free agent in 2008 and signing with the Bruins.
The right-winger’s debut season was solid, posting 21 goals and 45 points with a +36 rating in 81 games as Boston won 53 games and finished atop the Eastern Conference. He was one of many future under-25 impact players on that Bruins squad, featuring Patrice Bergeron, Milan Lucic, Phil Kessel and David Krejčí in the infancies of their careers. However, after his goal-scoring dropped off slightly in his second and third years in the league, Boston traded him to the Thrashers before the 2011 deadline for Rich Peverley.
Wheeler racked up 17 points in 23 games down the stretch for Atlanta, giving Thrashers fans a bittersweet taste of things to come for his production before the team packed up and moved to Winnipeg in the offseason. Now entirely in the prime of his career at age 25, Wheeler kicked off a dominant nine-year stretch in Winnipeg that saw him record 569 points in 616 games, ranking eighth in the NHL scoring between the 2011-12 and 2018-19 campaigns. His 384 assists during that time were fourth, trailing only Nicklas Bäckström, Sidney Crosby and Claude Giroux. He received All-Star consideration eight years in a row and finished as high as eighth in Hart Trophy voting in 2017-18 when he led the league with 68 assists in 81 outings.
After a 20-goal, 91-point showing in 2018-19, 2019-20 spelled out the beginning of Wheeler’s decline. He still managed a respectable 65 points in 71 games that year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. However, that was accompanied by an artificially high 12.2% shooting rate and a significant drop-off in his assist totals. He kept up reasonable offensive production in his final three seasons in Winnipeg, logging 161 points in 187 games. But the Minnesota native became a defensive liability as he aged and became a significant drag on the Jets’ possession quality control at even strength. Combined with just three playoff series wins during his time in Winnipeg, including a run to the 2018 Western Conference Final in which he had 21 points in 17 games, the Jets parted ways with their captain and bought him out.
While the end of Wheeler’s career may have been marred by declining all-around play and injuries, the former All-Star was a high-end top-line talent throughout the 2010s. The 6’5 “, 225-lb right-winger puts a bow on his career with 321 goals and 622 assists for 943 points in 1,172 regular-season games. He logged a +67 rating, posted 764 PIMs, and racked up nearly 3,000 career shots on goal, averaging 18:11 per game. He pairs that strong regular-season production with 10 goals and 45 points in 66 career postseason games. Pro Hockey Rumors congratulates Wheeler on a phenomenal career.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
I know Boston couldn’t afford him back in the day, but imagine that post-Cup Bruins team with him on RW with Bergeron and Marchand. Woulda been a nice first line.