New York Rangers: Reflecting on the Kevin Shattenkirk signing 1 1/2 years later

A year and a half ago, Kevin Shattenkirk was the biggest prize in the summer of 2017’s free agency. Now, the veteran defenseman looks like an ordinary player on a bad contract.

After suffering a shoulder injury against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Kevin Shattenkirk is expected to miss multiple weeks. The New York Rangers have a clown car of defensemen that can slide in to fill the hole but as the New Rochelle native gets close to the midway point of his contract, it’s time for some reflection.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Shattenkirk was one of the best offensively inclined defensemen in the entire NHL. While not Brent Burns or P.K. Subban, Shattenkirk put up five consecutive seasons of 40 points and led the league in primary power play assists twice. On those perpetually underachieving St. Louis Blues teams, the defense drove offensive production.

However, since joining New York with much fanfare of coming home to his favorite team from childhood, the defenseman has failed to play at the level he had in the past. Shattenkirk got injured in training camp last September and attempted to play through a torn knee ligament which sapped him of lateral quickness.

Ultimately, he didn’t make it past January and got surgery playing only 46 games in his first year. In that limited action, Shattenkirk produced 18 points which included ten power play assists.  In theory, the veteran was brought in to serve as the quarterback of the power play and orchestrate at a level that the team needed to seriously compete.

2017-2018

Of course, the context of the Rangers as a team has drastically changed since Shattenkirk signed his contract. At the time of the signing, the team was coming off of a deflating second-round exit to an inferior Ottawa Senators team. Since the defense was the biggest reason for failure, the front office bought out Dan Girardi and signed Shattenkirk on the first day of free agency.

At face value, swapping Shattenkirk in on the first pair alongside Ryan McDonagh should have resulted in a better Rangers team. Early on in the year, the power play was humming with the newly signed defenseman working with Mika Zibanejad to produce at a better than 20 percent clip.

As the season progressed, Shattenkirk’s knee injury inhibited his skating ability and kept him from getting to open space. When he shut it down in January, the team was in free fall losing both the defenseman and Chris Kreider sapped the team of all offensive punch on the man advantage.

The writing was on the wall and the front office elected to tear things down. With Shattenkirk entering his age 30 season, the chances of him winning a Stanley Cup with his hometown team essentially evaporated over the course of his first season in New York.

Going from a second-round postseason exit to lottery team is about a stark a dropoff as humanly possible. Somehow, with more 20-year-olds than a college bar that accepts fake IDs, the Rangers look to be improving from last season.

The Shattenkirk conversation

As of now, it’s safe to say that neither Shattenkirk or the Rangers lived up to their side of the bargain the two parties agreed to on July 1st of 2017. New York was supposed to be a contender putting the finishing touches on a championship caliber roster, instead, it’s had five first round picks in two years.

In regards to Shattenkirk, he was supposed to drive the power play and slide in on the top defensive pair to compliment the team’s best left-handed defenseman. Instead, he’s suffered two injuries and missed extensive time in both years. Hopefully, the separated shoulder doesn’t keep him out for too long, but there is a serious question to be asked: What was the point?

If the front office was so quick to realize that the team was a house of cards ready to fall apart, why did it invest a substantial amount of money in a defenseman that was about to turn 30? If the Rangers’ roster was so fragile that it was ready to be strip-mined in less than a week, was it ever that serious of a contender?

I understand the idea, the 2017-2018 Rangers were going to be the last best chance at a Stanley Cup with key players still on cheap contracts. Adding Shattenkirk to the mix was supposed to be the last ditch effort to keep the window for competing open just a little bit longer.

Things going wrong and not according to plan is simply a fact of life. New York’s front office had an obvious vision for success last year based on expectations. But, when things went wrong it cut bait at the right time and started to try and dig itself out of the whole it was in.

As for Shattenkirk’s future with the Rangers, the defenseman has two years remaining on his contract with a limited no-movement clause in which he submits a list of ten teams he would not accept a trade to. So, there is a scenario in which the team can recoup assets for the failed Shattenkirk experiment.

It may sound harsh to say, but the expectation was a Stanley Cup and instead, the Rangers have received below average defensive play as well as the occasional power play point from the New Rochelle native for $6.65 million per season.