The 2024-25 season was a challenging and embarrassing year for the New York Rangers, and a big reason the team failed to make the playoffs is due to key players vastly underperforming. One such player was Vincent Trocheck, but how worried should the front office and coaching staff be heading into the 2025-26 campaign, and could it be time to move on from him?
Depending on what stats and online resources you look at, you could come to the conclusion that Vincent Trocheck's best days as a hockey player are behind him. Trocheck just finished his third season on Broadway, and analytically it was one of most disappointing seasons of his career. For the past four seasons (2020-21 to 2023-24) Trocheck graded out as a first-line player in the eyes of sG, a value above replacement metric calculated by Micah Blake McCurdy of Hockey Viz. This season he dropped off a cliff to third-line status, and such a sudden drop is concerning given how consistent a player Trocheck had been.
It isn't just Hockey Viz that recorded drops in Trocheck's play, as Evolving-Hockey's numbers reflect it too. This season Trocheck posted a slash line that included a 51.31 goals for percentage, a 52.15 Corsi for percentage, and an expected goals for percentage of 47.42.
All things considered, those numbers aren't the worst in the world, but when you look at the bigger picture, you will see that those numbers were 54.95%, 52.15%, and 47.42% respectively just a season ago.
Offensively Trocheck finished the season with 26 goals, 33 assists, and 59 points in 82 games shooting 12.9% and skating 21:06 per night. Context is key, because at surface level most fans and teams would be happy getting nearly 30 goals and 60 points from a player making under $6 million a season. But considering the amount of minutes Trocheck gets, both at even strength and special teams, those numbers are underwhelming.
Especially because just a year prior he posted a line of 25-52-77 shooting 11.6% skating 21:27 per night. You can call him a victim of his own success, but the NHL is very much a "what have you done for me lately?" business, and Trocheck isn't immune to that.
The biggest explanation for the drop is that the Rangers' power play wasn't as good, but it could be a case of the unit taking a decline because Trocheck wasn't as effective a player as he'd been in years past.
While skating with a man advantage, Trocheck scored 5 goals and added just 7 assists for a total of 12 power play points. During the Presidents' Trophy winning season in 2023-24, the Pittsburgh native had 11 power play tallies, and 13 helpers for 24 points. That represents a drop of 12 points, but interestingly enough he made up some of that lost offense while killing penalties. Trocheck led the league with 6 shorthanded goals and added an assist to finish with 7 points. The prior year he had a lone shorthanded strike.
If we move to even strength performance, Trocheck finished with 15 goals this season after tallying 13 in each of his previous seasons with the Blueshirts. He also tallied 25 assists, down from the 39 he tallied in 2023-24 and the 34 recorded in 2022-23. You might now be thinking, "oh... Trocheck's points dropped because he had fewer assists, and that could be because his teammates sold his assist opportunities."
This is a possibility, and would be something you could attempt to calculate if you went back and tracked every single game. Potential assists is an advanced stat tracked by the NBA, and it would be cool if there were a way for the NHL to do that in the future. It would be a fun way to evaluate playmakers and determine who is setting up their teammates most often, and who is getting rewarded.
As a whole, however, the Rangers finished with 255 goals after scoring 278 in 2023-24 and 273 in 2022-23. Based on how much Trocheck plays, and considering the goal decline was 23 goals as a team year over year, you can see where some points were left on the table.
That was also true of Artemi Panarin who scored just 37 goals this season after notching 49 the year before, and 52 assists after recording 71 in 2023-24. His drop-off in total points from 120 to 89 (-31) was more alarming than Trocheck dip from 77 to 59 (-18) but both cases should make the front office reconsider the role each plays going forward.
It sounds extreme, but the hiring of Mike Sullivan to led the team from behind the bench is an inflection point. President and General Manager Chris Drury will try to make moves this offseason, he will have to do some things in order to have enough cap space to retain or replace current free agents, but it is entirely possible that 2025-26 represents an opportunity for Trocheck to prove why he should remain a Ranger.