New York Rangers: Jeff Gorton cannot overplay his hands this time
New York Rangers’ general manager Jeff Gorton has some monumental decisions in front of him. He cannot overplay his hands in trade talks like he has in the past.
The New York Rangers have a few of the biggest trade commodities on both the rental trade market and the non-rental market. Both Rick Nash and Michael Grabner could bolster a contenders’ two-way game and Ryan McDonagh and Mats Zuccarello could both push a team on the brink of contender status over the top.
So without question, Jeff Gorton will be the busiest man in the hockey community over the next week and a half with the trade deadline looming. The Rangers will be sellers and will need to garner as many valuable assets for their veterans as possible.
And it is very reasonable to feel a lack of confidence in the front office.
Look, Gorton has overplayed his hands in the past with a few different deals. One of those deals was the Cam Talbot deal at the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.
The Rangers still acquired a late second-rounder, a third-rounder and a sixth-rounder for Talbot and a seventh-rounder, which was an okay return, but after weeks of their being first-round picks floating around on the market for his services, it seems like Gorton could have gotten more than what he did.
Related: Five trades that got the Rangers into this mess
There is also the example of the Carl Hagelin deal that blew up in both teams’ faces. The team traded Hagelin for what appeared, at the time, to be 60 cents on the dollar.
Another example of Gorton’s failure to come up with good value was in the Derek Stepan trade.
I know all of the Rangers blogs have beaten this like a dead horse but the fact of the matter is that it’s true. Derek Stepan should have been able to get you a mid-to-high first round pick and a mid-tier prospect on his own.
Raanta was a guy who the team could’ve benefited from moving in a separate deal. He might have been able to bring something similar to what Talbot got–although probably a bit less–on the trade market but instead, it appears that the Rangers wasted an asset.
Gorton appears to be the opposite of Glen Sather. While Sather was, for the most part, a trade wizard, he was not very good at navigating through unrestricted free agency. Gorton appears to be good at finding diamonds in the rough like Michael Grabner, but other than the Mika Zibanejad trade, making deals with other teams appears to be an area of weakness.
Next: A theoretical Mats Zuccarello trade to Nashville
Of course, he has the chance to erase that narrative with how he handles the trade deadline and the upcoming NHL Entry Draft in June.
The pressure of an Original Six franchise is on his shoulders. Let’s see what he can do with it.