2026 Rangers Report Card: Jonathan Quick

This article is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2025-26 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

To read the Season Preview for Jonathan Quick, go here. 

Expectations

The last several pieces I’ve written on Jonathan Quick all start off the same way. The 2025 Season Preview piece had it, and this one does, too.

Jonathan Quick needs no introduction. The future hall-of-famer could have had an abysmal season and I fully believe the farewell tour would have endured. Turning forty years old in the middle of the season, everyone suspected this season would be it. Quick went from breaking the hearts of fans all over the tri-state area to winning us over with his camaraderie, attitude and heartfelt stories as he played out the end of his career for his childhood favorite team.

For the 2025-26 season, I laid out this framework for Quick to have a successful season.

Quick is expected to play in at least 25 games to give Shesterkin time to rest throughout the year. He'll also need to get back to his first-year form as a Ranger and have a save percentage above .900, so his team has a shot at winning every night he plays. A realistic and achievable goal for Quick would be to win 15 of his starts. As long as Igor stays healthy, these expectations would make for another successful year for Quick and the Rangers.

I went on to explain that, while that’s a path to success for Quick, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be his reality. However, I fully predicted he’d overcome adversity and help backstop the Rangers to a winning year.

Performance

GP 25 | W 6 | GAA 3.09 | SV% .891| SO 2

Not great, Bob. I’m unsure what was going on with me in the fall, but I had positivity on the brain. Whether it was my lack of sleep or my elation at Mike Sullivan’s hiring, I'm not sure. But I didn’t just miss the target—I never even made it to the range.

To give Quick credit where it’s due, he did play 25 games. It’s just that most of them were terrible losses and often barely registered as hockey on the Rangers’ behalf. If we dive a bit deeper into Quick’s performance, it was his worst season as a Ranger, with a -6.4 goals saved above expected, a slight dip from last season and a tragic fall from his first year as a Ranger, when he posted an astoundingly positive 9.8 goals saved above expected.

It’s safe to say that while Quick’s stats and performance were underwhelming, it’s difficult to expect anything different when the team is performing so poorly in front of him. You can’t win a game if you don’t score a goal, regardless of how well your goalie plays. An awful statistic to learn is that in February of this past season the Rangers had already surpassed the total number of shutout losses from their previous three seasons combined. They then went on to get shutout one more time in April, for a nice little cherry on top.

Quick suffered at the hands of his team, not scoring anything for him three times this season, which is fewer than you’d have guessed, but it’s still too many for the small sample size of games he plays in. He did, however, record two shutouts of his own and was less than a minute away from his third against the Detroit Red Wings in his second-to-last game. Quick continued to make history this year, passing Henrik Lundqvist with his 65th career shutout, ranking 17th all-time just behind Patrick Roy.

Despite his stats, Quick was close to being a serviceable backup for the Rangers. Could he have been better? Absolutely. It’s clear Father Time has come calling, as the veteran netminder was slowing down. Even if the Rangers had Quick from 10 years ago, it still would have been a losing season. After all, Igor Shesterkin’s win column didn’t fare much better this season, and while his individual stats also suffered, Igor was tremendous most of the year.

Near the end of the year, Quick was sidelined and the Rangers got a chance to see what their future in net could look like as Dylan Garand finally made his debut. The kid was alright. Quick’s injuries were vague, and to this day it remains unclear whether the organization shelved him for rest and see what Garand could do. Aside from the quality of play on the ice, Quick was still a supportive teammate and a fiery personality, often the first to take issue with the opposing team’s disrespect toward the Rangers in any capacity.

Grades

Author Grade: C

Banter Consensus: C+

Evaluation

The grades are in, and I think they’re mostly accurate. Perhaps a little less harsh than they could be, but we at Blueshirt Banter may be struggling to grade him accurately because of the sudden onset of blurred, watery vision when reflecting on his career and what he brought to the organization.

It’s been an honor to watch the best goalie in American history play out the end of his career and take his farewell tour this past season, even if he deserved better than the product the rest of the team gave him throughout the year.