Rangers Coming Into Shape

Chris Drury is apparently done making splashes. His latest move - re-acquiring Tyler Motte from the Ottawa Senators for a conditional seventh round pick and Julien Gauthier - is an indication that the GM believes his team's greatest need isn't the addition of another scorer like Patrick Kane to the top six, but a little sandpaper to his beleaguered fourth line. So Motte - who did a yeoman's job playing with Barclay Goodrow and Ryan Reaves in last year's tournament - will hopefully have a repeat performance with Goodrow and a player to be named later. You don't think Drury would be stupid enough to go with Jake Leschyshyn as his 4C in the postseason, do you? Leschyshyn is merely a caretaker until his replacement arrives. By this time next week Nick Bjugstad, Sam Lafferty, or someone comparable will be donning the blue and red.

Face it: in a perfect world - one without a salary cap - Drury would jump at the chance to land Kane. Hell, with no salary cap, Timo Meier would already be a Ranger. Unfortunately, there is a salary cap and once Drury pulled the trigger on Vladimir Tarasenko, Kane became a luxury he could no longer afford. Yes, I suppose if Drury is able to find someone to take Leschyshyn and Vitali Kravtsov off his hands - a big if - that might free up just barely enough cap space to swing it, but that would mean Goodrow becomes the 4C, which would be a mistake. Goodrow is a winger, not a center.

Like it or not, Rangers fans, you're going to have to deal with Jimmy Vesey playing in the top six. While his inability to finish over the last few games is a concern that could prove problematic in April and May, even more concerning is the fact that Gerard Gallant barely played his fourth line in the third period against the Flames on Saturday. A coach who shortens his bench in the third period is nothing new in hockey; it happens all the time. What happened in Calgary, though, had nothing to do with a coach shortening his bench; it was a not so subtle hint from Gallant to his boss that he couldn't trust some of his players with the game on the line. Credit Drury for getting it. 

Let's be clear here. Motte is not a silver bullet. Like I pointed out above, he did a yeoman's job on the fourth line last postseason, but Bob Gainey he ain't. What he does bring to the table is a quality this team on too many nights still lacks: the ability to win the battles in the trenches. This team has plenty of elite-level talent; what it doesn't have enough of are foot soldiers. Motte is a foot soldier who isn't afraid to get his uniform bloodied. The Rangers are a better, slightly tougher, team now than they were on Saturday.

And they will need every ounce of that toughness if they have any hope of beating what is, without question, the toughest, most complete team in the NHL. The Boston Bruins are having the kind of season teams dream about. At 43-8-5, they're the prohibitive favorites to win the Stanley Cup. They can score, they can defend and they have the best goaltending tandem in the league. Besting them in a seven game series will be a tall order.

With the top six teams all in the Eastern Conference, whichever team makes it to the finals will have gone through three rounds of a track meet. If the Rangers are to be that team, Drury needs to make one more move on his chess board.

It's Time for Drury to Cut His Losses with Kravtsov

Look, I'm not going to make any excuses for the way in which Gerard Gallant has used Vitali Kravtsov this season - and for the record, he has a short leash with most young players - but it's time for Chris Drury to admit a painful truth: the Russian winger was a reach when then GM Jeff Gorton selected him with the 9th overall pick in the 2018 NHL draft, especially considering the Islanders took Oliver Wahlstrom two picks later.

Just take a look at his overall numbers. They don't exactly jump off the page. The year he was drafted, Kravtsov had 8 goals and 21 points in 50 games in the KHL. While at Hartford, he had 6 goals and 15 points in 39 games. The year he bolted for Russia after Drury tried to send him back down to Hartford, he had 6 goals and 13 points in 19 games in the KHL. In 48 games as a Ranger, Kravtsov has 5 goals and 10 points. Meanwhile, Wahlstrom has 32 goals and 61 points in 161 games for the Islanders. Of the 217 players selected in the 2018 draft, only six have fewer points than Kravtsov.

Maybe he's not Lias Andersson, but he's sure as shit ain't Alex Kovalev. And now that his camp has asked that he be traded, he's a declining asset that Drury needs to get something for while he still can. This is not a time for stubbornness. Drury may have gotten a first-round pick from the Dallas Stars for Nils Lundkvist, but that was different. Dallas had a need for an offensive-minded defenseman and the Rangers were loaded at right D. Everyone under the sun knew the Rangers were a little thin at right wing, hence the trade for Vladimir Tarasenko. If Kravtsov can't crack this lineup, that's a red flag. Drury doesn't have the leverage he thinks he has, trust me. The longer he waits, the worse the return will be. If he can get someone like Nick Bjugstad from Arizona to bolster his fourth line for Kravtsov and a sixth rounder, he should jump at it.

Look, it's clear that Kravtsov has no future with this team. Drury has to know that. Somewhere out there is a team willing to give him another shot, the same way the LA Kings did with Andersson. Drury may have inherited Gorton's mistake, but he's under no obligation to keep throwing good money after bad, not with the trade deadline three weeks away and the playoffs five weeks after that.

Beggars can't be choosey.

Gary Bettman's Potential Early Christmas Present

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's announcement, following a board of governors meeting in New York, that the salary cap might go up to $86.5 million instead of the expected $83.5 million came as welcomed news to every general manager and player agent in the sport.

"We believe that there is a good probability that the escrow will be paid off this season. It may not be, but it’s going to be close we think, which means the flat cap will be replaced by a bigger increase. Revenue is pretty vibrant. We probably did $5.4 billion in [hockey-related revenues] this past season, which is actually about a half a billion more than we projected a year ago when we were starting things up. Things are good."

For those who haven't been paying attention - and from what I've seen on Twitter, that appears to be a rather large contingent of fans - the league has been operating under a flat cap since the 2019-20 season was paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, the salary cap was $81.5 million, and to make sure the cap wasn't reduced, the NHLPA agreed to have part of their players salaries placed into an escrow account. The understanding being that once that balance was paid off, the cap would resume its pre-pandemic trajectory. Initially, that was supposed to be at the conclusion of the 2023-24 season. That timeline has now been accelerated by one season.

It cannot be overstated just how significant this development is. Notwithstanding the financial losses the league suffered, many teams are literally staring at cap hell, both this season and next. A look at some of the moves GMs were forced to make over the past two summers underscores just how difficult it's been to build and retain a core of players. Many teams were unable to field a full roster of 23 players this season because they simply don't have the cap space. The Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche couldn't re-sign their number two center Nazem Kadri over the summer because they would've been over the cap. He subsequently signed with the Calgary Flames. Imagine if the Avs had an extra $3 million in the kitty.

Closer to home, Chris Drury is facing something of a quandary himself. At the conclusion of this season, Alexis Lafreniere, K'Andre Miller and Filip Chytil are all RFAs. At present, the Rangers, after waiving Dryden Hunt - or as Ranger Twitter has referred to him, the second coming of Rick Middleton - have just over $900k in cap space. That translates to about $4 million in deadline cap space for Drury to shop around for reinforcements at the trade deadline.

Assuming there are no additional buyouts this offseason, the Rangers will get $3.4 million in dead cap space off the books. Every cent of that money, and then some, will go to re-signing either Lafreniere or Miller, leaving Drury with some tough choices about which players to trade or let go. Even with the expected additional $1 million in salary cap and the expiration of Ryan Reaves' $1.75 million contract, there just isn't enough room at the inn to keep the band together. Imagine going through the pains of a rebuild and not being able to see it all the way through.

Now if all goes according to plan, Drury might be able to have his cake and eat it too. With a salary cap at $86.5 million, the Rangers would be able to keep Lafreniere, Miller and Chytil, provided they can get at least one of them - preferably Chytil - into a bridge deal. Below is what a potential 2023-24 roster could look like:

2023-24 Salary Cap

$86,500,000.00

Forwards
Panarin	$11,642,857.00
Zibanejad	$8,500,000.00
Kreider	$6,500,000.00
Trocheck	$5,625,000.00
Lafreniere	$5,000,000.00
Chytil	$3,750,000.00
Goodrow	$3,641,667.00
Kakko	$2,100,000.00
Blais	$1,525,000.00
Othmann	$894,167.00
Korczak	$859,167.00
Cuylle	$828,333.00
Rydahl	$800,000.00

Total  $51,666,191.00

Defensemen
Fox	$9,500,000.00
Trouba	$8,000,000.00
Miller	$4,000,000.00
Lindgren	$3,000,000.00
Jones	$1,200,000.00
Schneider	$925,000.00

Total

$26,625,000.00

Goalies
Gerand	$828,333.00
Shesterkin	$5,666,667.00

Total

$6,495,000.00

Total Cap Hit	$84,786,191.00
CAP SPACE	$1,713,809.00

As you'll note, I have Blais returning next year for the same salary he's making now and both Othmann and Cuylle making the team. Also, I have Gerand as the backup to Igor. I assume Drury will include Vitali Kravtsov in a deadline deal for either Patrick Kane or someone with a similar skill set. The bottom line is that under the higher cap, the Rangers would be able to retain not only their core but their young studs as well for the foreseeable future.

Of course, none of this is etched in stone. Knowing the NHL's penchant for disappointing their fans, it's entirely possible that the escrow might not be fully paid off by the end of the season. In that event, Bettman has made it clear that the cap will only go up $1 million to $83.5. And if that's the case, GM's like Drury will have to, once more, make lemonade out of lemons.

Kravtsov Debacle Is a Self Inflected Wound for Rangers

Of all the human vices out there, pride and stubbornness might be the most costly. Both basically prevent people from admitting mistakes, some of which are beauts.

In the Spring of 2018, the New York Rangers traded Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to the Tampa Bay Lightning for defenseman Libor Hajek, center Brett Howden, a first-round pick in 2018, a conditional second-round pick in 2019 and forward Vladislav Namestnikov. It was the start of the team's rebuild under then GM Jeff Gorton, and this trade was suppose to be the centerpiece of it. 

Three years later, it's obvious that the trade was a bust. Yes, the Rangers used the first round pick they got to select Nils Lundkvist, the talented Swedish defenseman who has a chance to become an elite player in the NHL. But the jury is still out on second rounder Karl Henricksson, who was just sent down to Hartford in September. Hajek is the last of the three players still with the team, the other two having been dealt.

For the better part of the last two years, Hajek has struggled to crack the Rangers lineup. At times he has looked good, at others he has not. As of now, he isn't even in the top ten in the organizational depth chart. Chris Drury would like to send him down to Hartford, but to do that he would have to clear waivers first, which means the Rangers would likely lose him for nothing.

So rather than bite the bullet and close the book on the McDonagh / Miller trade, Drury decided to send down 2018 first-round pick Vitali Kravtsov instead while he attempts to convince a GM dumb enough to take his call to give him a mid to late-round pick in return for Hajek.

Understandably, Kravtsov didn't take the news of his demotion very well, so he opted not to report to Hartford. And now the organization that was too stubborn to admit it got fleeced by the Lightning, has a disgruntled first round pick on their hands. Their solution to suspend the winger and give his agent permission to contact other teams to seek out a trade not only makes no sense, as Vince Mercogliano pointed out, issuing a public statement like that actually "diminishes his trade value."

The Rangers have had their fair share of self-inflicted wounds over the decades. But this one takes the cake. On the cusp of a season opener that was to begin a new chapter in the franchise's storied existence, for something like this to happen is unforgivable. It's bad enough they opted to pass on Oliver Wahlstrom, the burley, 200 pound winger taken by the Islanders two picks later, but now they've alienated the player they did choose - a player, mind you that has a promising future - in order to protect their interests in a player they have no use for. If your head is spinning, you're not alone.

This didn't have to happen. Drury should've swallowed his pride and cut his losses on Hajek in order to keep Kravtsov in New York. Even if, as Gallant has said, Julien Gauthier and Dryden Hunt had more impressive camps and would most likely have gotten more ice time, just being on the team would've helped his development. There is nothing more Kravtsov can learn by playing with the Wolf Pack. He's not Morgan Barron. Some additional seasoning isn't going to improve his game.

Hopefully this gets resolved before things go too far. Maybe someone can step in, calm down the young player and remind him of the bigger picture here. Perhaps fellow countryman Artemi Panarin can have a heart to heart with him. If that doesn't work, Drury should call up John Davidson in Columbus and, as Rick Carpiniello mused on Twitter, see if there's any interest.

Bottom line, it would really be a terrible waste if Kravtsov ends up becoming the next Lias Anderssen.