The Rangers are coming on their fourth trading date since ‘The Letter’, which declared the official start for the rebuilding of the organization, which was sent on February 8, 2018.
By this time, the rebuild had reached a point where the Blueshirts did not fall into the “Buyers” or “Sellers” category, which is commonly used to describe where franchises are striving for the Stanley Cup. They are somewhere in the middle, where they have achieved their goal of building promising prospects and young players to build, but they still do not have components that would make them legitimate competitors.
It is safe to assume that by Monday’s deadline, the Rangers will not make any bomb offers like former captain Ryan McDonagh and JT Miller sent to Tampa Bay in exchange for a first-round pick in 2018, a conditional second-round pick in 2019 a then 25-year-old Vlad Namestnikov (now in Detroit) and two prospects in defender Libor Hajek and center Brett Howden, who are now part of the team’s active list.
And unless there is too good an agreement (in this economy?) In which the Rangers would acquire a 1A or 1B center, you should not expect the organization to be big spenders either.
It’s a franchise that traded four consecutive first-round picks from 2013 to 2016, a time when the Rangers were defining a win-now organization. But it is also a team that has now used eight first rounds from 2017 to 2020.
Times have changed. The Rangers have changed. And most likely they will not make any groundbreaking changes until this season of innings in 56 games is over.
“We’ve been through it, it’s obviously the third year in a row that I’m going through it, our staff has been through it and these guys have been through it for the last four years,” head coach David Quinn said before. to Thursday’s 5-2 defeat for the Penguins. “I think we are a little different this year. You just never know. It is clear that [general manager Jeff Gorton] and I’m talking quite a bit. But there are things that can happen unexpectedly. You just never know what might happen this time of year. I’m sure the players will start talking about it a lot more in the next five, six days.
“It’s clear that the islanders are trading so big that people are starting to talk more about the deadline as soon as one domino falls.”
Yes, the first place Islanders – who host the Rangers on Friday night – are the kind of team that wins now. In that trade, the islanders acquired veteran forwards Kyle Palmieri and Travis Zajac of the Devils in exchange for minors AJ Greer and Mason Jobst, the first round in 2021 on the islands and a conditional choice in the fourth round in 2022.
It was an ideal move for a team that wanted to make a push for the Stanley Cup. The Rangers are simply not in that position at the moment.
But that does not mean that the franchise has not yet achieved what it has planned since the memorable announcement was made more than three years ago.
The disintegration of the team is complete, with McDonagh, Miller, Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes now playing for different clubs or retiring in Nash’s case. A good portion of the remodeling is starting to take shape, with Igor Shesterkin, Adam Fox, K’Andre Miller, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko, Vitali Kravtsov and the surprising addition of the first overall choice of 2020, Alexis Lafreniere. Oh, and Artemi Panarin.
But there is still work to be done. It can only be interrupted.