The Rangers reach their fourth commercial deadline since “The Letter,” which declared the official start of rebuilding the organization, sent on February 8, 2018.
By now, rebuilding has reached a point where Blueshirts fall into neither the “Buyers” nor “Sellers” categories commonly used to describe where franchises are in search of the Stanley Cup. They are somewhere in the middle, where they have achieved their goal of providing themselves with promising prospects and young players to build on, but they still don’t have components that make them legitimate competitors.
It can be assumed that until Monday’s deadline, the Rangers will not make any bomb deals like sending former captain Ryan McDonagh and striker JT Miller to Tampa Bay in exchange for a 2018 first-round pick , a second conditional round. choose in 2019, a 25-year-old Vlad Namestnikov (now in Detroit) and two possible in defender Libor Hajek and center Brett Howden, who are now on the team’s active roster.
And unless a deal is too good (in this economy?) Too good to overlook for the Rangers to acquire a 1A or 1B center, they don’t expect the organization to be a big investor either.
This is a franchise that changed four consecutive first-round picks from 2013 to 2016, a time when the Rangers were the definition of an organization that was winning now. But this is also a team that has now used eight first-round picks from 2017 to 2020.
Times have changed. The Rangers have changed. And they are unlikely to make any innovative changes until the end of this season of 56 intradivisional games.
“We’ve been through this, obviously, this is the third year in a row I’ve been doing it, our staff has been through it and these guys have been through it for the last four years,” head coach David Quinn said in Thursday’s defeat by 5-2 against the Penguins. “I think we are in a slightly different position this year, in my opinion. You just never know. Viously, [general manager Jeff Gorton] I talk a lot. But there are things that can happen unexpectedly. You never know what might happen this time of year. I’m sure players will start talking about it a lot more over the next five, six days.
“Obviously, islanders do this big trade, so people start talking more about the trade deadline once a domino falls.”
Yes, the Islanders in the first place, who host the Rangers on Friday night, are the team that now wins. This trade led the Islanders to acquire veteran strikers Kyle Palmieri and Travis Zajac of the Devils in exchange for minor players AJ Greer and Mason Jobst, the 2021 Islands first round and a conditional fourth round pick in 2022.
It was an ideal play for a team that is pushing the Stanley Cup. The Rangers just aren’t in that position right now.
But that doesn’t mean the franchise hasn’t accomplished what it’s intended to do since that memorable announcement was made more than three years ago.
The dismemberment of the team is complete as McDonagh, Miller, Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes now play for different clubs or have retired in the case of Nash. Much of the remodeling is beginning to take shape, with Igor Shesterkin, Adam Fox, K’Andre Miller, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko, Vitali Kravtsov and the surprise addition of Alexis Lafreniere’s first 2020 win. Ah, and Artemi Panarin.
But there is still work to be done. It may be paused.