New York Rangers Fans Need to Realize Trading Carl Hagelin Was a Must
It was the perfect ending to a New York Rangers fan’s nightmare.
On Sunday night, the hockey universe saw the Pittsburgh Penguins lift Lord Stanley’s Cup. If seeing Sidney Crosby lift the cup and win the Conn Smythe–which should have gone to Phil Kessel–wasn’t bad enough for Rangers fans, seeing Carl Hagelin hoist the cup over his blond flowing locks was.
Much has been made about the trade that sent Carl Hagelin to the Ducks at the draft last summer. Carl Hagelin was a fan favorite on Broadway. He brought his unique skill set of speed and grit to the team for 4 seasons and was part of a run to the Cup Finals once and the Eastern Conference Finals three times, so when he got dealt on June 27th, nobody who rooted for the Blueshirts was happy. Now, after getting traded to the Penguins from the Ducks, Hagelin became a lock on a line with Nick Bonino and Phil Kessel, which was a catalyst for their cup run. Hagelin notched 16 points in 21 games in the playoffs, which led to even more questioning among Rangers fans of then GM Glen Sather‘s decision.
But what most fans don’t realize is; they needed to trade him.
Yes, it was partially the front office’s fault to put the team in a situation where they would need to ship him out, but that is neither here nor there. Hagelin was a 3rd liner in his time with the Rangers. Even if he was a spectacular penalty killer for the club, a 3rd liner in this salary cap era cannot be paid $4 million or more per season. On top of that, with contracts like the ones that belong to Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Rick Nash, there is no wiggle room for slightly overpaying a guy to stick around.
Lets also be reminded the Carl Hagelin’s Penguins team where he found so much success was a group filled with world class players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malin, Kris Letang, and linemate Phil Kessel. He never had those type of players around him in New York, and that is part of the reason that he couldn’t find success worthy of that contract here.
With all of that said, the Rangers needed to get more for him then they did.
A lot of New York Rangers bloggers were always saying how Emerson Etem, the forward they acquired in the deal with Anaheim should’ve gotten a longer leash and more playing time. I didn’t agree with that at all. Etem has all the ability in the world to be a productive player, but even though he is still young–he is 24 years old–he showed me–and apparently Alain Vigneault–absolutely nothing to make me believe he was worthy of extended playing time. In fact, the only game he played where he made me think “hey, maybe this kid can be productive” was the game against Anaheim at the Garden. The fact that the Rangers could only get a middling prospect for him in Nicklas Jensen— who did end up having a great tournament at the World Championships–should tell you all you need to know.
You can’t say the Rangers won or lost this trade yet because neither team got great production out of the players they got. Hagelin had 4 goals and 8 assists in 43 games before he got traded to Pittsburgh. The deal will be looked at in the future based on the production of the draft picks involved in this trade, Ryan Gropp for the Rangers (41st overall) and Julius Nattinen (59th overall) and Garrett Metcalf (179th overall) by the Ducks.
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The Rangers probably overplayed their hand with Hagelin in trade talks like I believe they did with Cam Talbot last year as well. That part is the Rangers fault, but the decision to move Hagelin was not their fault, it was the fault of the Salary Cap.