{"id":76480,"date":"2025-07-19T22:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T22:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/76480\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T22:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T22:37:08","slug":"wheeler-retires-from-nhl-after-16-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/76480\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheeler retires from NHL after 16 seasons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/blake-wheeler-8471218\" title=\"Blake Wheeler\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blake Wheeler<\/a> announced his retirement from the NHL on Saturday after 16 NHL seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The 38-year-old forward last played in the NHL with the New York Rangers in the 2023-24 season. He had 21 points (nine goals, 12 assists) in 54 games before sustaining a lower-body injury on Feb. 15, 2024, that kept him out of the remainder of the regular season. He didn&#8217;t play again until May 28, which was Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Florida Panthers. It was Wheeler&#8217;s only game in the Stanley Cup Playoffs that season.<\/p>\n<p>Selected by the Phoenix Coyotes in the first round (No. 5) of the 2004 NHL Draft, Wheeler had 943 points (321 goals, 622 assists) in 1,172 regular-season NHL games for the Boston Bruins, Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets and Rangers. He had 45 points (10 goals, 35 assists) in 66 playoff games.<\/p>\n<p>Wheeler signed a one-year contract with the Rangers for the 2023-24 season on July 1, 2023, one day after the Jets bought out the final year of his five-year, $41.25 million contract, making him an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n<p>He spent 13 seasons with the Jets\/Thrashers and was captain from 2016-22. Wheeler ranks first in games (897), assists (550) and points (812) and fourth in goals (262) in Jets\/Thrashers history. His 39 playoff points when them (nine goals, 30 assists) rank third.<\/p>\n<p>Among American born players in the NHL, Wheeler is 26th in games played, 25th in goals, 11th in assists and 14th in points all-time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blake Wheeler announced his retirement from the NHL on Saturday after 16 NHL seasons. The 38-year-old forward last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-76480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114882297412809643","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}