If everyone plays nice in the locker room for the New York Rangers, this should not be an issue. However, one cannot help but notice that there could be an issue in the coming season with two players in particular. Those two players are Jacob Trouba and Blake Wheeler. You may be looking at this and already thinking I’m insane for suggesting that an issue could arise with the captain and a newcomer, but there’s a world where there are issues.
See, typically people who are accustomed to leadership roles do not do so well when put in a situation where they don’t have that power. Wheeler used to be Trouba’s captain in Winnipeg you see. This is something that sticks out like a sore thumb. For two players from a team that supposedly had locker room issues to have its former captain now being subordinate to Jacob Trouba has the ability to go sideways fast.
Winnipeg’s locker room reportedly had a cloud of animosity and toxicity towards the end of Blake Wheelers’ days as Jets captain if reports are to be believed. When former Jets coach Paul Maurice left, a lot of people assumed it was because of the locker room and how bad the situation inside it had gotten. While these assumptions may be unfounded in hindsight, there’s no denying that there is a chance for things to get worse in New York.
Now, is it likely? No. Hockey players are weirdly mature off the ice because there are so many talented kids, bad people tend to get thrown out of the sport. There’s going to have been at least some level of approach from the front office to Trouba before picking up Wheeler, so this hopefully will not be an issue, but Murphy’s law seems to apply to the Rangers all the time, so anything that can go wrong will go wrong.