Tarrytown NY: Rangers prospects show skills at development camp
NY Rangers prospects skate during a development camp at the MSG Training Center in Tarrytown July 1, 2025.
The news that Dave Maloney will be promoted as MSG Networks’ lead TV analyst for New York Rangers games for the 2025-26 season came as no surprise to former teammate Ron Greschner.
“‘You’re in this business because you could never shut up as a player,'” Greschner told Maloney, who recalled the message with a laugh on a July 9 call announcing his new gig.
Maloney will take over for Joe Micheletti, who spent the previous 19 seasons providing color commentary for the Rangers before announcing his retirement in May.
The former Blueshirts’ captain will be part of a new-but-familiar TV booth, joining Kenny Albert after the duo spent the last 20 years calling games together on the radio. Albert is set to replace Sam Rosen, who recently retired after 40 years as the team’s play-by-play voice.
Alex Faust will assume Albert’s old position doing radio play-by-play, while Maloney’s replacement on the analyst side has yet to be announced.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Maloney, who will turn 69 on July 31. “If someone had presented this kind of opportunity at this stage of my life and my career, I wouldn’t have believed that it would happen.”
The Kitchener, Ontario, native was content in his role as radio analyst and MSG Networks contributor, and like many Rangers fans, he couldn’t picture a TV broadcast without Rosen and Micheletti.
“I respected Joe so much, (and) I never, ever expected this role to be available,” he said. “And that was cool – totally cool. Joe and I got along great. We developed a tremendous relationship.”
But when Micheletti told Maloney he was stepping down at the end of the 2024-25 season, he reached out to the powers-that-be to inquire about the opening.
“I wanted to make sure my hat was in the ring,” Maloney said. “Sure enough, here we are. It’s just something that I never thought would be probable or possible.”
He traced his broadcasting interest back to the spring of 1981, when a knee injury knocked him out of the playoffs and he was asked to join Marv Albert and Sal Messina in the booth. (He recalled Marv’s son, then-13-year-old Kenny Albert, keeping stats for them.)
The Rangers went on a run to the NHL semifinals, with Maloney’s enjoyable experience behind the mic planting a seed for his post-playing career.
“It’s about as close as you can get to the game without actually playing,” he said.
A defenseman who was drafted 14th overall in 1974, Maloney returned to the ice in the fall of 1981 and played four more seasons. He served as the youngest captain in franchise history from 1978-80 and spent 10-plus of his 11-year NHL career with the Rangers, but it didn’t feel the same after he was traded to Buffalo during the 1984-85 season. He decided to retire that summer at the age 28.
He went to work on Wall Street for a number of years, but found himself gravitating back toward the game he loves in the 1990s and early-2000s. He worked for multiple networks, including FOX, and became the Rangers’ full-time radio analyst alongside Kenny Albert for the 2005-06 season.
Twenty years later, they’ll be front and center as the leading figures for MSG Networks’ TV coverage.
Maloney plans to bring many lessons from his decades of experience, during which he’s earned a reputation for straightforward analysis and earnest enthusiasm for the team he’s spent over 50 years associated with.
“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that my passion for this particular franchise is pretty deep,” he said. “Learning along the way to express myself as an analyst, and not a critic, has been important – to be able to observe and not opine or make it personal. And then I’ve never forgotten how hard the game is.”
Vincent Z. Mercogliano is the New York Rangers beat reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Read more of his work at lohud.com/sports/rangers/ and follow him on Twitter @vzmercogliano.