New York Rangers: It’s always darkest before the dawn

The New York Rangers traded away a lot of familiar faces in an effort to rebuild. The future of this franchise is very much unknown, but that’s okay.

A few weeks ago, the New York Rangers announced that they would be selling off at the deadline and that a rebuild was coming.

So when players like Rick Nash, Michael Grabner, and Nick Holden were traded, the fan base was heavily in favor of it. All three of them were upcoming UFAs and the team needed to get assets for them before they walked.

But once captain Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller were traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning, reality hit them in the face like a ton of bricks. A rebuild was truly coming, and not the kind that would take a single offseason to do. This team, with pieces that were integral to the franchise’s success over the past decade, has been stripped down. Their time is up, and a full rebuild is underway.

To some, the team’s direction they are moving towards is puzzling. There is a whole generation of fans who don’t know anything but winning on Broadway. How could you blame them?

One could argue that with a few solid decisions in free agency, the Rangers could have had another kick at contention in 2018-19. In reality, they’d need everything to go exactly, perfectly, right to be true contenders again. In the game of hockey, few things go exactly, perfectly right.

And that’s even if the Rangers kept McDonagh, hired a new head coach and brought back Nash or Grabner.

The time to start over is officially upon us.

The team is going to struggle for the next few seasons. It is going to be really difficult to watch, especially as more and more recognizable faces of a time of triumph go out the window as it finally shuts down for the first time in a decade.

Related: Thank you, Captain McDonagh

But on the bright side, there will be a chance to contend in a few years with some bright new stars waiting in the wings.

The Rangers have started to build this thing down the middle and on the blue line. That is how a championship team is built. It was also the team’s two biggest areas of weakness. Players like Filip Chytil and Lias Andersson have star potential. If the Rangers net a top-five pick in the draft, their chances of grabbing a star-in-the-making like Rasmus Dahlin, Andrei Svechnikov or Filip Zadina are huge.

And the rebuild also likely means that Henrik Lundqvist will never win a Stanley Cup a Ranger. I mean, Martin Brodeur got the Devils to the Finals at age 39 and had two more solid seasons after that, so if the rebuild is done right, it isn’t impossible. Whether they chose to do this rebuild now or later, Lundqvist probably wouldn’t have had a great chance to win a Cup in New York either way.

At the end of the day, the team has a vision for the future. If you look around the league, the best teams are built through the draft. That is how the Rangers are going to do this and a combination of Jeff Gorton and Gordie Clark is a good one to have.

Next: Roundtable: Grading Gorton's work at the deadline

There is a big ominous cloud above the Broadway Blueshirts right now. But remember, my friends, it is always darkest before the dawn.