New York Rangers: Jeff Gorton knows how to build, look at Boston

For the third time this decade, the Boston Bruins are in the Stanley Cup Final. The New York Rangers general manager, Jeff Gorton, built the Bruins’ core, he’s working on it in New York.

The average shelf life of a general manager in the National Hockey League is just four and a half seasons. That’s long enough for one or two draft classes to progress through the system and make it to the show and a vision of the organization to take shape. New York Rangers’ G.M. Jeff Gorton is entering his fourth offseason in the role and adapted to change well.

When Gorton assumed the position in the summer of 2015, the Rangers were coming off of a President’s Trophy-winning season and in the upper echelon of contenders. However, with time, that core needed to be paid and got older. This forced Gorton’s hand 15 months ago and he opted to push the reset button in a difficult market.

For the most part, teams can’t rebuild in New York because of the city’s nature. If the Rangers struggle, people would simply do something else than go to Madison Square Garden for hockey. Yet, here the team is going into a crucial summer with things looking up. If anything, it’s pretty obvious that choosing to rebuild was the right decision.

Based on Gorton’s track record as an executive with the Boston Bruins’ organization, it was just a matter of getting the go ahead. Key pieces that Gorton selected or traded for are the focal point of the team that took a 1-0 lead in the Stanley Cup Final Monday night against the St. Louis Blues. In fact, as interim G.M. Gorton set the Bruins up for the next decade.

During the summer of 2006 over the span of 113 days, Gorton established the core of a winner.

It’s Tuukka time

Although goaltender Tim Thomas was in the crease for the Bruins’ first cup final appearance this decade, it’s safe to say that netminder Tuukka Rask’s sublime play this postseason is Conn Smythe award caliber. It was a draft night trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs that brought the Bruins’ goalie of the future to Massachusset’s capital city.

Boston sent 2003-2004 Calder trophy winning netminder Andrew Raycroft to the Maple Leafs for Rask straight up. To that point in his career, Raycroft had one superb season (2003-2004) and an absolutely dreadful one (2005-2006). In his second season, the netminder had a 3.83 goals against average and a .879 save percentage.

During that 2005-2006 season, the Bruins finished in fifth place with the Leafs just ahead in fourth. With the two teams mired in mediocrity following the lockout canceled season, both looked to make moves and improve. Toronto, who made it to the second round in the year prior to the lockout, felt it could win with Raycroft in the net.

It’s worth noting that the Leafs selected Rask 21st overall in the 2005 entry draft as a 17-year-old from the Finnish Elite League. With that context, Toronto realized that it’d be several years before he’d ever play at the NHL level, so it looked for the short term fix.

Rask assumed the full-time starter role in Boston during the 2013 lockout-shortened season when the aforementioned Thomas failed to report for training camp. At this point, if the Bruins capture the Cup, Rask is a lock for the Conn Smythe, he’s won a Vezina and finished top five multiple times.

Landing a franchise goalie for a depreciated asset? Point Gorton.

Draft night

However, for all of the lopsided trades that can be made, it’s ultimately how well a G.M. drafts talent that proves their worth as an executive. On draft night that year, aside from trading for Rask, Gorton landed three bonafide NHL talents, which is a pretty good return in terms of a draft.

For reference, the Rangers once went three consecutive drafts (2014-2016) without selecting a single NHL regular. Over that span, 20 different draft picks played a grand total of five NHL games. It is worth noting that New York did not have a first-round pick in any of those seasons.

Now, back to 2006, the Bruins had six draft picks, including fifth overall. With that top five pick, Boston selected University of Minnesota product Phil Kessel. While the current Penguin didn’t last long in Boston for a litany of reasons, his impact on the organization cannot be overlooked. It was Kessel that got traded for a bundle of assets that would become Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton.

After Kessel, the Bruins missed on their first second-round pick, Yuri Alexandrov, who never came to North America from the KHL. However, the team’s other second-rounder, Milan Lucic, managed to become a key contributor to the first two Stanley Cup Final runs for Boston.

While it may seem like ages ago now, there was a point when Lucic was amongst the most dominant power forwards in the entire league. The power forward had five seasons of 40 points or more in the black and gold including a career-high of 62 in 2010-2011, the year which Boston won the Cup against the Vancouver Canucks.

The third and final impactful pick from that class was resident face licker and pretty good hockey player Brad Marchand. It’s weird to think that Marchand was assumed to have hit his ceiling back in the 2015-2016 season of around 60 points and 37 goals. However, the arrival of both David Pasternak and Patrice Bergeron in the middle of the two gave him a new lease on life.

These past three years, Marchand has found a new level to his game and he’s now safely amongst the best wingers in all of hockey. Two seasons of 85 and then one of 100 points are in rarefied air, especially from a non-center.

Free agent pieces

Now, with Rask, Kessel, Lucic and Marchand in the fold, the Bruins of this decade are at least recognizable. However, the most important of all the Boston players had yet to sign. That would come on July 1st in the form of free agent defenseman Zdeno Chara. Without Big Z in the fold as the anchor, the Bruins would not truly be the Bruins.

Even now at age 42, the big man brings so much to the table as a leader. Sure, his physical skills aren’t what they were several years ago but as a captain, Chara sets the tone for the entire locker room and brings the group closer together.

The defenseman won a single Norris Trophy and finished top five for the award five other times in his time with Boston.

Add in the fact that Gorton also signed center Marc Savard who had seasons of 96, 78 and 88 points as a Bruin before concussions prematurely ended his career.

Summary

While Gorton’s time in the Bruins’ organization spanned from 1994-2007 in a variety of different posts, his brief time as interim G.M. was remarkable. With a short leash, knowing he wouldn’t get to see the end of his choices the Rangers’ current G.M. put on a masterclass display. Chara, Rask and Marchand are still all important pieces for the Bruins to this very second.

That’s why Gorton deserves the benefit of the doubt here in New York. While he hasn’t drafted someone of Marchand’s caliber or traded for a Rask, he’s done pretty well. In fact, landing Mika Zibanejad for Derick Brassard could serve as the Raycroft for Rask level of lopsided trade with New York.

Gorton knows what it takes to design a winner, although he didn’t get to realize his vision for the Bruins, one in New York is coming to fruition. The core of a winner is beginning to take shape in the form of prospects and draft picks.

While the immortal Casey Stengel did once say “See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

Meaning that prospects are nice to have, but eventually, they need to pan out. The Rangers are about a year and a half into a rebuild, Filip Chytil looks like the real deal, ditto Adam Fox. Throw in Lias Andersson with a full year of NHL reps, Vitali Kravtsov and the second overall pick from this June and suddenly things seem okay.

Gorton doesn’t exactly have a Marchand caliber home run draft pick, yet.

While begrudgingly sitting through another potential Boston world championship, just take a second and think about Gorton’s ties to the Bruins and what it means to the Rangers.