The New York Rangers have been amongst the NHL’s Stanley Cup contenders for the better part of the decade. Now, facing a rebuilding season, how can fans survive the lull in the action?
The modern sports world operates in multiyear cycles. The average shelf life of a head coach is only four seasons and a general manager is just five seasons. Being that two G.M.s, Ken Holland of the Detroit Red Wings and David Poile of the Nasvhville Predators have been in their respective posts for 21 years, the average is skewed slightly higher.
New York Rangers General Manager Jeff Gorton has been the man in charge of roster decision for four off seasons following this summer window. During this time frame Gorton has been tasked with adding parts to a contender to try and win the Stanley Cup and stripping the roster down for assets. While selling off team cornerstones like Rick Nash and Ryan McDonagh may not have been easy, the return was the deciding factor.
In the interest of both preserving his job and eventually putting a competitive team on the ice again, Gorton went back to the drawing board. Instead of trying to force a round peg into a square hole with the same core for one more season, the G.M. made an honest assessment and determined that the long term health of the franchise was more important than a brief playoff appearance.
While the choice may have been easy for Gorton, a fanbase that has grown used to deep playoff appearances may get antsy in the short term.
The ugly
To say that the New York Rangers got used to making deep postseason runs is an understatement. In fact, the Rangers have won the most playoff games of any team this decade to not win the Stanley Cup. The sheer quality of the teams that the front office has put on the ice should have broken through at some point. In all seriousness, the 2015 probably has the best chance with a healthy Mats Zuccarello and Ryan McDonagh.
But, on from the woulda coulda shoulda. There is something unsettling about watching a bad team wear the blue sweater with a diagonal Rangers across the chest. Simply put, the team that was on the ice for the final 25ish games of the 2017-2018 seasons was an embarrassment. Under no circumstance should the team’s defense consisted of Brady Skjei, John Gilmour, Neal Pionk, Ryan Sproul, Rob O’Gara and Marc Staal. That group of defenseman hemorrhaged shots at an unsightly rate and were not an NHL quality defensive unit.
Unfortunately, New York will likely have a bad team again for the 2018-2018 season. Assuming that Kevin Shattenkirk, Brendan Smith and Tony DeAngelo all return to some semblance of NHL quality players, the team’s defense will be better. By how much is unknown at this point, but it’ll be a slight uptick in quality on the blue line.
However, as a whole, the team will still be stuck with a significant hole. The biggest issue is a lack of top pair quality defenseman. While Shattenkirk is good enough to be on a first pair, he has never been the top dog on a team. The New Rochelle native cannot be depended on to play 25 minutes per night against the other team’s best players.
The hope
The modern NHL is shaped around exploiting the current salary scale. The current CBA favors a team that has several key contributors that are still on their entry level contract. In a league with a hard salary cap, saving money at any roster spot possible is a necessity. The textbook example to point out is the Toronto Maple Leafs being that they had Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander all on entry level contracts at the same time. Since all three of these players had a combined cap hit of less than $3 million, the team still had enough cap space to sign free agent John Tavares.
The New York Rangers hopefully have two prospects, Filip Chytil and Vitali Kravtsov, that can reach the level of players like Marner and Nylander. It sounds like the obvious, but any quality team needs building blocks to work out around from. The team is expecting Chytil to make the NHL roster out of training camp or be ready for 20 minutes per night in the AHL on the top line to get further seasoning.
The biggest issue for the upcoming season is a lack of place. There is no realistic expectation for the Rangers to compete for the 2018-2019 season. While the team’s forwards are decent and bordering on good, the defense is simply too bad for the rest of the roster to overcome. The elephant in the room that no one wants to address is what happens if Henrik Lundqvist falls off a cliff at age 36?
Ride on
While things may seem dire right now, Jeff Gorton has continually made the right long term decisions. The biggest asset that the Ranger’s G.M. currently holds is flexibility. The team’s owner, James Dolan, has green lighted a rebuild and given Gorton a window in which to return the Rangers to the playoffs.
Logically, Gorton has sought to stockpile as many prospects as possible. The conventional wisdom around prospects is to acquire as many as possible and hope that one hits like a lottery ticket. That is why it makes sense to sell off expiring contracts at the trade deadline instead of trying to shoehorn a player into the lineup at the expense of the future. Using the Rick Nash trade as an example, the Rangers were able to acquire a roster player (Ryan Spooner,) a mid tier prospect (Ryan Lindgren,) a first and seventh round pick.
Simply put, Nash had more value as a trade chip than a player in the Ranger lineup. That maximization of value is the key to executing a successful rebuild. A team needs to be able to extract good value out of its roster assets to sure up the future. While it may seem like kicking the can down the road, it is in fact helping the best proven method of assembling a quality NHL roster.
Draft picks and prospects are the NHL’s lifeblood. They are both cost controlled pieces to a lineup and planning that are part of the process. There is no cheat code outside of free agency, but being that the best players rarely hit unrestricted free agency, hoping for an elite player to hit the open market is a fool’s errand.
While it may not be pretty this upcoming season, the Rangers are working out a process. There will be exciting young players to wear the sweater in the coming seasons that should hold over the fan’s appetite. A potential line of Chytil, Kravtosv and Pavel Buchnevich in two or three seasons sounds like an awfully good reward for two years of missing the playoffs.