Rangers Are a Mess: What Comes Next?

The goal for any team, especially a front office that doesn’t have all the time in the world, is to avoid the bottom of the standings for too long, especially in a pressure-packed market like New York. Drury and the ownership want the Rangers to be competitive quickly because of the fans. The irony, of course, is that the fans want a rebuild and are ready to move on from a core that’s become stale. 

The Ideal Rebuild For The Rangers

It starts with an Artemi Panarin trade. The star winger is a free agent at the end of the season and is their most valuable trade piece. He has a no-trade clause but assuming he removes it, the Rangers would receive at least three pieces in return to kickstart things. A no-trade clause limits options for the front office. That said, all they need are two teams that Panarin wants to make a Cup run with, and they can get what they want in a deal. 

Trading Panarin and the other rentals is a retool. It shouldn’t stop there. The other forwards they’ve built around are starting to age out of their primes and can be traded to lean into a rebuild. The only question is who prefers to play for a contender instead of a rebuilding team, whether it’s Mika Zibanejad or Vincent Trocheck. Finding out who is willing to move gives the Rangers options. 

The other factor in all of this is building up the farm system. It’s something they failed to do when they issued the previous letter with the intent to rebuild, and something they haven’t addressed since. The prospects in their system aren’t taking steps forward, and most of them are failing to develop (forwards like Brett Berard, Brennan Othmann, and Dylan Roobroeck come to mind). Only a handful of players on the roster were drafted and developed by the Rangers, and it’s a reflection of the shortcomings of this front office. 

These rebuilds take time, and that’s something the Rangers, especially their ownership group, don’t want to take. Plus, there’s no guarantee that a rebuild where they focus on drafting and developing will work out. Multiple teams are in the middle of rebuilds where they’ve focused on the prospects, teams like the Buffalo Sabres, Chicago Blackhawks, and Columbus Blue Jackets, and these teams are still at the bottom of the standings (the Sabres are having a resurgence lately but it’s been 14 years in the making). 

How Dolan & The New York Market Complicate Things 

It’s always important to keep the owner or the ownership group in mind with any rebuilding team. Jame Dolan particularly has a bad reputation, or at least a rough past. He was seen as one of the worst owners in sports, notably with how he handled the New York Knicks, a team that had 16 losing seasons from 2000-01 until 2019-20. 

Things improved once Dolan took a back seat. When he let the front office and the coaching staff run the team, they immediately improved and became a destination for players. It’s why, since 2020-21, the Knicks have become a better team, one of the best in the NBA (and that’s enough basketball talk for this column). 

The bottom line is that Dolan doesn’t want to be the hands-on owner who interferes with everything. It’s why he’s patient with Drury and willing to wait things out with him. It also explains why he doesn’t want to make another GM hiring, knowing there’s a good chance he won’t get it right. Ryan Smith, who owns the Utah Mammoth, said it best on 32 Thoughts that the best owners hire the right people and get out of the way. Dolan wants to stay out of the way, yet might be forced to step in, considering how far the Rangers have fallen. 

The other layer of a teardown is the New York market. It’s better in sports to have angry fans than disinterested fans. The Rangers fanbase, especially those who spent their money on season tickets, want to see a winner and won’t sit around for a rebuild. Yes, a lot of fans claim they want a rebuild but that’s before the losing seasons and last-place finishes pile up. 

It’s also worth noting that with Igor Shesterkin, they won’t be a tanking team. Elite goaltending raises the floor, and that’s what Shesterkin does for the Rangers. They won’t be in a position to draft consistently in the top five. So, the Rangers must retool instead of rebuild.

Rangers Ultimately Will Change Things in the Summer

The Rangers are where the New York Islanders were a year ago. It’s an older team that’s gotten stale, without a great prospect pool, and no light at the end of the tunnel, all with a coach built for a win-now team. The Rangers can use an Islander reset, which involves some lottery luck but also involves one or two big trades. 

Last season, the Islanders traded Brock Nelson to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a top prospect. If Nelson could bring back Calum Ritchie in a trade, the Rangers could ask for something similar for Trocheck, another center over 30 but with a proven track record of scoring in the playoffs. Trading Trocheck and Panarin allowed them to return next season with a younger roster with NHL-ready players but with a core led by Shesterkin that can still make the playoffs. 

Then, they get to work in the offseason, where they look to add talent to retool on the fly. However, that leads to another obstacle, which is that the Rangers will have an urge to spend but not much to spend it on, since the free agency class isn’t great. The only way to make a significant upgrade in the summer will be with another trade. 

It makes the pieces they get in a Panarin, Trocheck, or Zibanejad trade more intriguing. The Rangers can flip those pieces for NHL-ready players like the Vancouver Canucks did with their first round picks acquired in the Bo Horvat and JT Miller trades (landing them Filip Hronek and Marcus Pettersson). It’s unclear whether that’s what the Rangers should do, and there’s no correct answer. So, it will be interesting to see whether Druury is the one that Dolan trusts to make those decisions.