Rangers Do the Right Thing and Stand Pat

The trade deadline came and went and Jeff Gorton didn't flinch. The man who three years ago let millions of Rangers fans know via a letter that the team which had twice gone to the conference finals and once to the Stanley Cup finals was going to be torn down and rebuilt, resisted the urge to take a short cut and stood pat.

Not that it was all that difficult a choice for Gorton. The players who were available were, for the most part, rentals at best and came with a high premium. To give up a first round pick for a player who not only would've been gone in a couple of months but would've taken a valuable spot away from an up and comer, might well have set the whole rebuild back a year, maybe more.

And while the team has taken something of a step backwards in its development this year, the immediate future looks quite promising. The Kid line of Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere is finally starting to click; newcomer Vitali Kravtsov picked up his first point against the Islanders on Sunday; sophomore Adam Fox is tied with Victor Hedman for the most points among defensemen; and, as we speak, the Rangers are in the process of signing UMass phenom defenseman Zac Jones to an entry level contract. I expect him to make his professional debut soon.

Not counting Tony DeAngelo - whom they will surely buy out - the Rangers will have an extra $13 million in available cap space to play with going into next season. More than enough to work out a trade for Jack Eichel, assuming the Sabres aren't unreasonable in their demands. Gorton would've been nuts to panic now.

Indeed, the Rangers, despite the prospect of missing the post season three out of the last four years, are sitting pretty when it comes to the salary cap. Virtually every team from the Islanders to the Tampa Bay Lightning is going to have to make some tough decisions about which players they can retain and still stay under the cap, which for the foreseeable future is going to be flat at $81.5 million. Apart from extending Pavel Buchnevich to what will likely be a hefty raise, I don't anticipate Gorton having any issues with his contracts.

And then there's the Seattle expansion draft, where each team is allowed to protect seven forwards, three defenseman and one goaltender. Here again, the Rangers are in the cat-bird's seat. Thanks to a plethora of entry-level contracts that exempts almost a third of the roster from exposure, it's entirely possible the Blueshirts will emerge as the only team in the league to remain intact going into next season. Gorton couldn't have designed this any better if he'd tried.

That's not to say that everything is hunky dory over at the Garden. Far from it. There are still a lot of unanswered questions concerning the makeup of this team. They have way too many east-west type players that can bury the puck if you give them the room, but when you take away their passing lanes and force them out of their comfort zone, they tend to disappear. The three-game sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes last year, as we now know, wasn't an anomaly; it was a red flag. They're way too soft, and management must find a way of injecting some muscle into this bunch if they are ever going to take the next step forward.

But even with all that, things are looking up for this organization. The glass is more than half filled, and by this time next year, this young and, at times, exciting group of players, should be a playoff team.