New York Rangers: A Look at the other Rebuilding Teams
Ottawa Senators
The Ottawa Senators are not in a good place right now, especially if you consider them rebuilding. While they have some talented forwards and a young defense corps, the team is weighed down by a group of highly paid, and unproductive veterans, most particularly Bobby Ryan.
This Ottawa organization has made some good moves as of late, like drafting Brady Tkachuck and Thomas Chabot, and they got a decent return for All-Star defenseman Erik Karlsson. However, they also made one of the absolute worst trades ever at the start of last season. They traded away Kyle Turris, the rights to Shane Bowers, Andrew Hammond, a third round pick, and what ended up being a top lottery pick, to improve a team that had taken the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Penguins to seven games in the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals. What followed last season was a disaster and this season has been much worse. Now the Colorado Avalanche, a team with a plethora of young offensive talent, will likely have the best shot at the first overall pick this coming draft.
The Senators then took Matt Duchene, the player they received for that haul, and shipped him to Columbus for two prospects and two conditional first round picks. This organization is dysfunctional right now and I don’t see them anywhere near the playoffs soon.
Detroit Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings are quite a bit further along the path than the Senators, but they still have a fair amount of work to do. The Red Wings are currently the third worst team in the league, only ahead of Ottawa and the Los Angeles Kings, another struggling franchise. Management in the Motor City has done well to stock up the roster with young forwards but has done little to alter the rest of the lineup.
The Red Wings’ roster boasts some of the best young offensive talent in the NHL. They currently have the likes of Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou, and Filip Zadina all under the age of 24 and under contract through next season. The rest of the lineup leaves much to be desired, as it’s full of aging players without much in the pipeline.
Luckily, the brass will have some level of flexibility this coming offseason. The Red Wings have their own first round pick and three second round selections. They also will have more cap room, as approximately $13 million will be shed in the forms of Thomas Vanek, Nicklas Kronwall, and Jimmy Howard. They will have to put Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen back on long-term injury reserve to get that full level of cap relief, however.
Los Angeles Kings
The Los Angeles Kings are a team much like the Rangers in a way. After a sustained stretch of success, Father Time has taken his toll on the Kings’ core. The team is currently next to last in the NHL and has relatively bare cupboards.
The multiple Stanley Cup winning Kings are no more with most of the core players that remain upwards of 30 years old and on the decline. Anze Kopitar is having an okay year, but Jeff Carter, newly signed free agent Ilya Kovalchuck, Dustin Brown, and Alec Martinez are not performing up to snuff. As for young talent, the Kings have Carl Grundstrom, Adrian Kempe, Austin Wagner, Gabriel Vilardi, and Rasmus Kupari. However, all of these young players are forwards and they are not overloaded wth prospects on defense or in goal.
In a way, the Kings are in the same position that the Rangers were in last season when they decided to start their rebuild. The team had been quickly declining but management hadn’t made the tough decision to start rebuilding yet. The major difference is how bad this Kings team is compared to how the Rangers were.
New Jersey Devils
I’m not all too sure that the Devils know that they’re rebuilding. But with that being said, they are fairly far along in the process. They have solid young talent at all three major position groups, but there just isn’t much in the way of continuity or stability.
Up front, the Devils have the likes of Taylor Hall, who is in his prime at this point, Nico Hischier, Pavel Zacha, and Jesper Bratt. Defensively, their young talent includes Sami Vatanen, Damon Severson, Will Butcher, Mirco Mueller, and Steven Santini. In net, the Devils have Mackenzie Blackwood, only 22 years old.
The Devils were one of the NHL’s biggest surprises last season, and that hampered their rebuild. At the deadline, they traded away young assets to acquire Michael Grabner and Patrick Maroon only to lose in the first round. This season, with the team at the bottom of the league standings, they dealt Brian Boyle, Marcus Johanssen, and Ben Lovejoy for a handful of draft choices.
Compared with the New York Rangers
The Rangers are firmly in the middle of this pack. The organization appears to have a clear direction: picking up young talent at every position, especially defense. But at the same time, the Rangers still haven’t found their new number one guy; they hope to have that in Russian forward Vitali Kravtsov or Wisconsin defenseman K’Andre Miller.
Next. New York Rangers: Defenseman John Gilmour deserves a second look. dark
This Rangers squad will be much better in a few seasons if some of these seemingly savvy draft choices, like Miller, Chytil, and Nils Lundkvist, develop into the players they’re projected to become, as the Rangers have a deep and well-rounded prospect pool, unlike some of the NHL’s other rebuilding teams.