Scoring depth
New York has a weird scoring situation. Panarin has 41 points. Mika has 38. Fox is a point per game 35. Then it drops off to Trocheck on 28 points followed by Kreider who has 26. That is a complete list of everyone who has more than 20 points. This is a roster that is incredibly top-heavy. While this hasn’t impacted the roster recently with how it has been playing, it could be a problem in the postseason.
One of the issues the team has suffered is that there is not a lot of cap space to go out and get players that could help their production issues. Guys like Sammy Blais are being paid $1.525 and are still looking for their first goals of the year. Replacing those players with someone that can score 10-15 goals a year on the bottom line could be a huge difference moving forward.
CapFriendly projects the Rangers to have $7,121,804 at the deadline. There is enough there to say that the Rangers could go and pick up someone to fix the scoring problems if the roster is in a situation where the big guns are starting to falter. If the Rangers were to go out and add someone like Frank Vatrano as they did just before the deadline last year, they could really make this team deep.
A theme you’ll notice is that this doesn’t have to be external help. If Gauthier, Kravtsov, Chytil, Kakko, Lafreniere, or anyone else can heat up and stay in the lineup consistently to score at a good rate and relieve some of the pressure of the big 5 to score everything the Rangers need, there is not going to be as much stress on the big boys heading down the stretch.