New York Rangers: A Trade is Brewing

The way all the New York Rangers offseason moves are lining up, it looks clear as day that a trade might soon go down.

For an offseason lacking many blockbuster moves, the New York Rangers certainly have done a lot with their roster. So far this offseason, the Rangers have added forwards Michael Grabner, Nathan Gerbe, and Josh Jooris via free agency, traded for Mika Zibanejad, and have signed rookies Pavel Buchnevich and Jimmy Vesey to entry level deals. The team also expects Hartford Wolfpack forwards Nicklas Jensen and Marek Hrivik to compete for a roster spot. If you throw those forwards together with the other 9 forwards on the Rangers’ roster that I didn’t mention, it’s obvious that the team has way too many.

Now, that is not to say that having a lot of depth is a bad thing. It is actually a very good thing that all the best teams in the league have. The problem with having this much depth at forward is how it prevents the team from having a lot of depth on the blue line, which knowing how bad some of the team’s defensemen were last season, is not a good thing.

Of those 18 forwards who will look to take thirteen or fourteen roster spots–12 in their starting lineup–12 of them are wingers.

I don’t know about you guys, but to me, that screams the word “trade” from the rooftop of Madison Square Garden.

I think the Rangers realize that their defense isn’t in the greatest shape, and they should. Not one person on their defense had a great year last year, and the one guy who you could maybe argue had a very good year, Keith Yandle, is no longer with the team.

It is hard to fix a defense in a cap era that has contracts like Girardi’s and Staal’s on it when those two players aren’t playing anywhere close to their pay grade. I think that is something that a lot of Rangers fans don’t realize.

I think Jeff Gorton has done a fantastic job this offseason addressing that forward depth and the penalty kill, and I think that he tried to deal Dan Girardi and Marc Staal, but to no avail. I think his thought process might be to wait it out till the season starts, have them both build their trade value’s up a little bit–because they both can’t be any worse– and try this again at some point before the trade deadline.

Or perhaps, Gorton’s plan was to address the defense by addressing the offense.

A lot of the criticism I have seen this offseason, which was highlighted by the Jimmy Vesey signing, was that the team didn’t address their problems with that signing. I disagree on two accounts.

Firstly, I think the Rangers needed to address their forward depth after yet again not having a first round pick. Signings like the Vesey one and the Hayes one a few years ago allow a team to stay afloat when you deal away those picks high-end picks while also having a farm system in transition.

Secondly, I think that Gorton’s plan B was to stockpile forward assets and exchange one of them, be it a Rick Nash,a Kevin Hayes or somebody else and possibly, but not necessarily, package them in a deal with either Staal or Girardi, for a puck-moving defender.

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Of course, this is easier said than done. Puck-moving defenseman in this day and age are very hard to come by, and when you have them, you should do everything you can to hold onto them, which will make them very hard to acquire in a trade. The Rangers have the assets at forward that they would need to make a deal, but even still, finding somebody to bite and make a deal with will be difficult.

A possible Rick Nash for Kevin Shattenkirk trade has been rumored since last February, and now maybe the Rangers feel like they have enough assets where they can swallow the loss of Nash in that scenario, and maybe eat a bit of his salary too now that they have at least a little wiggle room with cap space. That all important cap space, I think, was one reason I think the Derick Brassard trade was made.

The Rangers now have an unbelievable amount of forward depth, so, in my estimation, it is only a matter of time until Gorton goes and ships some of those assets out of the picture for help on the back end.

Next: Rangers Signing Jimmy Vesey Could Keep Window Open

It’s a plan that may not be visible on the surface, but if you look deep enough into it, it all makes too much sense to not be a legit observation.