New York Rangers: Is Jacob Trouba worth keeping?
After Artemi Panarin, the marquee acquisition for the New York Rangers last summer was Jacob Trouba. He was the stud defenseman the Rangers had lacked since trading Ryan McDonagh and he was the guy who would anchor the defense for years.
When it came to Jacob Trouba, New York Rangers fans had been salivating over him for years. His desire to get out of Winnipeg had been well documented after a series of holdouts and arbitrations. When Jeff Gorton traded Neal Pionk and a first round draft pick for Trouba, Ranger fans crowed and Jets fans howled.
The Rangers then went out and avoided salary arbitration, giving Trouba a seven-year, $56 million contract with an annual cap hit of $8 million. Expectations were high.
His season
On a pure statistical basis, Trouba had a good year. He played more minutes than any other Ranger, averaging 22:34 minutes per game. He led the team in hits with 173, 74 more than any other defenseman.
Offensively, he didn’t come close to his performance in his last season in Winnipeg. His 27 points were just over half of his total in 2018-19. This season he scored seven goals and added 20 assists. However, with the offensive prowess of Tony DeAngelo and Adam Fox, Trouba’s offense was not what he was needed for, it was shutdown defense.
Critics will point to Trouba’s plus/minus rating of -12, worst of any defenseman on the team. But consider that Trouba is the defenseman who is on the ice when defense is needed most. Only 29.1% of his zone starts were in the offensive zone. He had 264 defensive zone starts, compared to 165 for Adam Fox and 135 for Tony DeAngelo. Considering the team’s inability to win a majority of faceoffs, defensive zone starts are a recipe for a negative plus/minus.
It doesn’t count towards plus/minus, but on special teams Trouba was one of the go-to defensemen along with Marc Staal and Ryan Lindgren. He spent more time on the penalty kill than any other blueliner.
If there was one area that Trouba has an issue is his shot accuracy. He led all Ranger defensemen in shot attempts with 333. 168 of them ended up on goal, a 50.5% accuracy percentage. DeAngelo was on goal 56.1%, Adam Fox was on goal 51.5% and Brady Skjei was on goal 57.7% of the time. Shots on goal create rebound opportunities and Fox and DeAngelo created more rebounds than Trouba while taking fewer shots.
One area that doesn’t stand out statistically is Trouba’s physical play. He is a big, tough player with a nasty streak. In Trouba and Ryan Lindgren, the Rangers have a pair of tough defensemen who will make players on other teams think twice when entering the Rangers’ zone. That factor cannot be accounted for in advanced analytics. .
While Trouba’s season doesn’t stand out statistically, for the most part, he fulfilled his mission and the expectation has to be that he will get better every year.
Is he overpaid?
This is where the controversy lies. $8 million a year is a huge commitment to any player and it puts Trouba in a stratosphere of NHL defensemen. Only six other NHL defensemen make as much as Trouba and that begs the question, he is one of the top seven defensemen in the league?
What is fascinating is that this was a pretty awful year for the highest paid defensemen. Except for John Carlson of the Washington Capital, they all had off-years. Erik Karlsson, P.K. Subban, Drew Doughty, Brent Burns and Oliver Ekman-Larsson were all off their career bests.
It really was a season for young defensemen to flourish including Dougie Hamilton, Zach Werenski, Ivan Provorov, Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and the Rangers’ own Adam Fox and Tony DeAngelo.
To add insult to injury, Neal Pionk had six goals and 45 points and a plus 10 rating and is making $3 million a year playing on the top pair for the Jets. To be fair, Pionk plays a completely different game from Trouba so they shouldn’t be compared strictly on offense.
Based on his results and the numbers for his peers this season, if Trouba had to sign this summer, there is no way he would command the big payday that he received. What makes it a little more palatable is the fact that of the 15 highest paid defensemen in the NHL, only Aaron Ekblad is younger than Trouba.
The conclusion is that he is overpaid, but with a locked in seven year contract, his $8 million hit may be seen as somewhat of a bargain in the future as salaries rise.
Should they keep him?
Asking if the Rangers should keep him begs the question, would anybody want him? At his price tag, is there a team willing to take on that kind of cap hit for what he brings to the table? In these uncertain times, the chances of the Rangers even being able to deal him would range from slim to none.
However, if a rival general manager called Jeff Gorton and proposed a trade with some salary retention, the Rangers’ GM would have to listen.
The one reason that the team may look for a suitor is that after this season, a No Movement Clause kicks into his contract and he cannot be traded or sent to the minors for the next four years. In the last two years of his deal he has a Modified No Trade Clause in which he submits a no-trade list to the team.
Trouba could be seen as expendable in that the team could see Adam Fox as their top right defenseman for many years to come. Tony DeAngelo slots into the second pair and prospect Nils Lundkvist projects to be their third righty defenseman in a year of two. The team could move one of their right defensemen (DeAngelo) to the other side, but there’s no denying a surplus of a good thing.
As it is, the likelihood is that Trouba isn’t going anywhere and the Rangers have to commit to the fact that he will be the anchor of their D-corps for the next six seasons. He may not score 20 goals and 80 points, but playing shutdown defense against the opposition’s top lines is no small challenge. Of course, the team needs to find a partner who will complement Trouba’s style of play. That was something they had a lot of trouble with this season.
Trouba’s first season in New York is too small a sample size to base an assessment of his future. He played well enough to show that he can become the defensive foundation the team wants him to be. Considering their commitment of time and money they made to him, he had better be.
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