What the Buchnevich trade means for the future

When the New York Rangers traded Pavel Buchnevich to St. Louis the fanbase went nuts.  As infuriating as the enigmatic Russian could be when he passed up prime scoring opportunities to pass the puck or missed an open net, he was still the right winger on the top line, one of the team’s best penalty killers and a well liked locker room presence who grew up as a Ranger.

Sammy Blais and a second round draft pick seemed like meager pickings for a player of Buchnevich’s quality and there is definitely some merit to that.   What no one could understand was why Chris Drury felt compelled to trade Buchnevich at that time.

It felt even more rushed when Buchnevich immediately signed a four-year deal with the Blues with an Average Annual Value of $5.8 million.  While it is an increase of over $2 million from his former salary, it isn’t crazy money and the term locks him up until he is 30 years old. The Rangers had the cap space to sign him and he would have been a valuable trade asset if they had to unload him later.

But dig a little deeper and the deal may provide some hints about Chris Drury’s master plan.

Playing the kids

One thing that infuriated Ranger fans during the Quinn regime was the allotment of playing time to the Rangers’ crown jewels, Alexis Lafrenière, Kaapo Kakko and Vitali Kravtsov.   Relegated to third line duty for most of the season, many believed that they were underutilized and not given the chance to show what they could really do.

Granted, there was a strategy behind  their implementation as David Quinn wanted them schooled in playing all three zones before they would earn top six minutes.   And the truth is that they all got more ice time as the season went on.

The oddity was that Quinn didn’t use his young defensemen the same way.  He threw Adam Fox, K’Andre Miller and Ryan Lindgren into the mix from the start, playing heavy minutes.

Did Drury agree with how Quinn utilized his young forwards?  By trading Buchnevich he accomplished two things.  He acquired another forward in Blais who epitomizes the “hard to play against” philosophy, but more important is the fact that without Buchnevich, it almost forces Gerard Gallant to play Kakko and Kratsov on the top two lines from day one.

There’s still an option to move Kreider to the right wing, but we’ve seen that experiment before, including last season, and he didn’t look comfortable there. The hope has to be that Lafrenière will supplant Kreider on the top six.  Even playing on a third line with Barclay Goodrow and Filip Chytil, Kreider would still get top power play minutes so his ice time wouldn’t suffer and that third line would be make the team that much deeper.

More trade possibilities

There’s no doubt that Chris Drury will jump at the chance to acquire a top six center if the right deal comes along and he is waiting to see how low Buffalo will go in asking for a return for Jack Eichel, but by trading Buchnevich he might have ruled out any possibility that the team would include Kakko or Kravtsov in a trade for a center.

Trading one of those two would either force Kreider to play the off wing or make the Rangers move Goodrow, Chytil, Julien Gauthier or Dryden Hunt up to the top six.  None of those options make the Rangers a better team.

If there is a deal to be made for a center the odds are it would involve Ryan Strome and prospects from the surplus of young defensemen in the pipeline, not either one of the two right wingers crucial to the Blueshirts’ future.

Unless there is a deal in the offing for a winger like Vladimir Tarasenko, we have  to hope that Chris Drury and the Rangers are going to stay the course and develop their young assets as they transition to a playoff contender.

Looking ahead

Cap considerations are a big part of every roster decision.  If the team had ended up with Buchnevich and Kreider on the third line, they would have almost 15% of their cap space tied up in two third line wingers and that’s too much.

If Drury believes that their crown jewels will be as good as we want them to be, he has done a good job making the Rangers’ forwards hard to play against though his acquisitions of Goodrow, Blais, Reaves and Hunt.  The team is deeper and better and if the kids are as good as we think they are, the future is bright.

If the plan goes south, there’s always a chance that they will regret dealing Buchnevich.  But if the plan works and Gallant can get the most out of his young stars, it was a deal that needed to be made.