Blake Wheeler Is a Solid Option for the New York Rangers This Summer

Earlier this week, New York Rangers reporter Jonny Lazarus mulled over the possibility of a Blake Wheeler buyout in Winnipeg allowing the Rangers to take a chance on the former ninety-point-scoring right winger.   Darren Dreger also reported that the Winnipeg Jets are leaning toward buying out their former captain.

With Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko likely out of Manhattan on July 1st, the New York Rangers have one single natural right winger on the team’s current payroll. That is 22-year-old Kaapo Kakko.

Aside from the former second-overall draft selection, the Blueshirts are running thin with organic right flankers. The franchise traded Pavel Buchnevich to give Kakko and Lafrenière a shot at the top six, the hypothesis of the tandem’s linear growth a mis projection and continuous project.

It is evident the experiments have failed at converting one of the four NHL-level lefties to their backhand dominant lane. Jimmy Vesey and Barclay Goodrow simply don’t belong there for a contending team.

The New York Rangers have prospective assets that can earn a lineup position and solidify the depth chart at the position, but there is no guarantee that a player jumps from the CHL or AHL into a top-six role on the number one economically valued team in the NHL in 2023. The pressure for those youngsters to make that jump would be an immense undertaking.

The other option is to investigate free agents. According to David Pagnotta, the New York Rangers have pursued Travis Konecny.  With the price steep for an asset of Konecny’s nature, it could be worth looking into former Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler.

Wheeler comes with a lot of what the Rangers need to compete now. He does not need to facilitate play in the top six, he simply needs to compliment the big apple’s Broadway stars like the Mika-Kreider combo or troubled superstar Artemi Panarin.

The 36-year-old winger dodges the re-tread label with the role he’d play. The Rangers could lose an assistant captain in Goodrow to free agency. Wheeler was the captain of a team in a Canadian market during their years of success under recent Stanley Cup finalist coach Paul Maurice

For this move to happen the Jets would have to buy the last year of Wheeler’s contract out at the price of 8.25 million dollars. That could be a possibility with the direction the franchise is going, and the withering of relations between Wheeler and the management.

It would make for a no-stakes, low-value contract for a player that may have some gas in his tank as a compliment to players that needed supportive linemates rather than superstars. After all, the Plymouth Minnesota native played on a line with Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele during the Jet’s years of success in the 2017 and 2018 post-seasons.

It also still allows players like Kakko and Lafrenière to have a chance to play top minutes while ensuring the team has a value contract that competes at the NHL level in Wheeler, simultaneously nullifying the Vesey second-line assignment conundrum from 2022-2023.

Wheeler currently sits at nine hundred and twenty-two points in one thousand one hundred and eighteen regular season games, and forty-five points in sixty-five post-season contests.