There’s a chance Jimmy Vesey played his final game in the NHL last season. But that doesn’t mean the former New York Rangers forward has decided to hang up his skates just yet.
Daria Tuboltseva of RG Sports reported that Vesey may play in Russia next season.
“Jimmy has been asking a lot of questions about how things work in the KHL and is seriously considering offers from the top European league,” a source close to Vesey told RG.org.
Tuboltseva went on to report that four KHL teams are interested in the 32-year-old forward and that “The frontrunner for Vesey’s signature is SKA St. Petersburg.”
Vesey played 43 games in the NHL last season — 33 with the Rangers and 10 with the Colorado Avalanche. He was traded along with Ryan Lindgren from the Rangers to the Avalanche for Juuso Parssinen, Calvin de Haan and two draft picks on March 1, and finished with eight points (five goals, three assists).
Though he was not a lineup regular with the Avalanche, Vesey welcomed the trade after he went public in January to share how unhappy he was with his lack of playing time with the Rangers. Vesey appeared in 161 of 164 games the previous two seasons in New York, but couldn’t maintain a steady role in the Rangers’ bottom six in 2024-25.
“It seems that I’ve fallen out of favor and have just been cast aside over an extended period of time,” Vesey told Larry Brooks of the New York Post midway through the season. “It feels like I have no role or purpose on this team.
“I’m kind of dying by being here.”
Former Rangers forward Jimmy Vesey contemplates move to KHL
Vesey was originally signed by the Rangers as a college free agent after he won the Hobey Baker Award as the top NCAA men’s hockey player in 2016. He scored 17 goals twice and 16 goals once in his first three NHL seasons with the Rangers, then played for the Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks and New Jersey Devils.
He returned to the Rangers before the 2022-23 season and played up and down the lineup under Gerard Gallant and Peter Laviolette the next two years. He combined for 24 goals and 51 points over those two seasons before his opportunities to play were reduced in 2024-25.
If his NHL career is over, it ended with Vesey a healthy scratch for all seven games when the Avalanche lost to the Dallas Stars in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last spring.
Vesey has 101 goals and 194 points in 626 regular-season games in the NHL, and nine points (two goals, seven assists) in 31 postseason games.
