NEW YORK — After a two-goal game in Detroit earlier this month, Barclay Goodrow said he knows that putting points on the scoresheet is important.
“Obviously, I’d like to do it more often,” he said.
Indeed, the 2023-24 regular season was a trying one for the 31-year-old. He had only four goals and eight assists for his lowest point total since 2016-17, when he spent all but three games in the AHL. His underlying numbers were among the worst of the team’s forwards, and he went 56 games in a row without a goal. It was not the level of production a team expects from a skater on a $3.641 million average annual value contract.
With a good postseason, though, any disappointment will be forgiven. And playoffs have traditionally brought out the best in Goodrow.
GO DEEPER
Matt Rempe believes he’s ‘built for the playoffs,’ and he showed why in Game 1 win
The fourth liner did more than enough for the Rangers in Game 1 against Washington, picking up two assists — as many as he had the final 31 games of the regular season — in the second period. He centered left wing Jimmy Vesey and right wing Matt Rempe on the fourth line, and the Rangers controlled play with those three on the ice, leading the Capitals in shots, shot attempts, goals and expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick. And while Goodrow won less than half of his faceoffs (47.1 percent), he cleanly got a puck back to Vesey immediately ahead of the winger’s goal.
“Throughout playoffs you need all four lines,” Goodrow said after the 4-1 win. “If we can chip in a goal or two, obviously that’s huge for the team.”
The forward knows plenty about what a team needs to win in the postseason. He played a key role in the Sharks’ 2019 run to the Western Conference final, scoring a Game 7 overtime winner against the Golden Knights in the first round. Tampa Bay acquired him the next year, and he played in the Lightning’s bottom-six during their two recent Stanley Cup victories.
“He does all the things that never end up on the front page of the paper,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “When you win a game 1-0 and he wasn’t the goal scorer but the other team’s got the goalie pulled and they’re pressing to get the equalizer, who’s on the ice? Barclay Goodrow is. When you need the big penalty kill that nobody really talks about but happened in a game, who was on the ice? Barclay Goodrow. If you need the big shot block, who was on the ice? Usually it was Barclay doing it.”
Panthers forward Carter Verhaege, Goodrow’s teammate on the 2020 Cup-winning Lightning, added that he did “whatever we needed,” be it blocking shots or forechecking hard.
“He wins battles, he was a magnet to be around with his teammates,” Cooper said. “But none of those things usually make the paper because somebody in the game probably had two (goals) and one (assist), and that’s what gets in. But the guy who had two and one will point to Barclay as the first guy to say, ‘we don’t win the game without him.’”
Those elements led Rangers president and GM Chris Drury to sign him to a six-year, $21.85 million deal after the 2020-21 season. The team named him an alternate captain before he even played a regular season game. He scored double-digit goals in each of his first two seasons in New York and put up a career-best 33 points in 2021-22. Then came this year’s dropoff. His 12 points were 20 fewer than the 32 points he averaged in his first two years with the Rangers, and his average ice time went down, too.
There are still three more seasons on Goodrow’s deal. After his struggles this season, it seems possible — if not likely — that he won’t finish the contract in New York. Salary cap flexibility is essential for contenders like the Rangers, so Drury could try to move Goodrow to a club not on his 15-team no-trade list. The Rangers could also buy out the rest of his deal which, because of the contract’s structure, would save the Rangers $3.88 million of space in 2024-25, according to CapFriendly. Part of Goodrow’s salary then would be on the books for the five seasons after that, though.
Drury doesn’t need to make any of those decisions yet. For now, the focus can be on his postseason performance.
“You watch the (playoff) games around the league: It’s heavy, it’s physical, it’s about the battles,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “That’s his DNA.”
That’s earned him the trust of his teammates. Rempe, a rookie, credited Goodrow with taking him under his wing, and Kaapo Kakko mentioned his veteran teammate’s Stanley Cup experience twice during his media scrum with reporters Monday.
“I just feel he knows what to do out there,” Kakko said.
“He’s got a calmness that he brings to the locker room,” Jonathan Quick added. “His day-to-day work, everything he does, preparation, guys take notice for sure. You know that when he steps on the ice he’s ready to go.”
Along with his two assists in Game 1, Goodrow’s defense left a mark against Washington. He played 2:43 on the penalty kill unit that successfully kept Washington off the board during four Capitals power play tries. In Goodrow’s 10:58 5-on-5 ice time, Washington had only four scoring chances, and the Rangers had 69.47 percent of the expected goal share, according to Natural Stat Trick.
One strong playoff game doesn’t change regular season results. But a string of them on an extended run can make much of the sour taste go away, and Sunday afternoon was a good starting point for Goodrow.
(Top photo of Barclay Goodrow and Nic Dowd: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
