New York Rangers: Lightning crashes, Rangers fans shouldn’t cry
Lightning crashes, Tampa Bay cries. New York Rangers fans may be thinking about crying as well after the historic sweep by the Columbus Blue Jackets. As a result, the Rangers lose out on a first round pick in this years’ draft. But save your tears, there is a silver lining.
Put the tissues away. Before tears are shed at the loss of a New York Rangers first round draft pick due to Tampa Bay bombing-out in the playoffs, let’s take a look at positive side of what just transpired.
When the Rangers declared rebuild last year and subsequently traded Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to the Tampa Bay Lightning, many Rangers fan could not make sense of the deal.
Some fans just hated to see another team captain traded to Tampa Bay, others thought adding Miller to the deal was too steep of a price to pay. Sure the Rangers got some young talent in return, but at the time it was a hard deal to swallow.
One year later, perhaps we are starting to see what Rangers management had been seeing for several seasons.
McDonagh and Miller are not winners.
On the ice for the Rangers, McDonagh wore the “C”. While he was certainly a skilled player who occasionally flashed brilliance, there wasn’t much to point to in the “lead by example” category during his time with the Rangers.
Miller was a hard-nosed player but he never really showed leadership characteristics either and had a disturbing habit of making dumb and costly mistakes.
Fans don’t have the privilege of knowing what goes on in the locker room, but coaches and team executives certainly do. Maybe they saw something in these two players over the years and realized that they were not the guys to lead the Rangers to the promised land.
Watching the first round series against Columbus certainly supports that argument.
Miller was nowhere to be found and McDonagh looked lost out there for much of the series. He seemed downright crippled after Victor Hedman went down after Game Two. When the opportunity to really step up was placed before McDonagh, he wilted. Face it, if those guys can’t win with this Tampa Bay team, they certainly are not the guys you build around.
Is that something Rangers management saw in their young captain and was the impetus to break it all down? Seems like a pretty plausible explanation at this point. After all you would think Glen Sather knows what a winner looks like. Sather also learned his lesson the hard way about long-term overpayment of aging defensemen.
Think about this, Tampa is on the hook for McDonagh for six more years at $6.75 million per. He’ll be 36 going into his last contract year.
If Gorton and Sather saw this coming, as a fan you have to be impressed by the savvy of the Rangers management team to commit to a new direction and make the trade with Tampa Bay.
So Rangers fans, don’t shed any tears over a lost first round draft pick. Instead, look at the bigger picture and rejoice in the fact the that the Rangers are making smart, calculated decisions.
Addition through subtraction.