Bi-Polar Rangers Aren't All That Hard To Figure Out

We've seen this movie all too often throughout the season. It's a familiar pattern. The Rangers go on a hot streak and torch a few, shall we say, lower echelon teams, which gives fans hope that this rebuild, which started three years ago, is now on the verge of producing tangible fruit. Then they get shut down by a top-caliber playoff team and just like that, the air is let out of the balloon. As Robin Williams used to say, "Reality, what a concept."

After Sunday's drubbing of the Buffalo Sabres, the Blueshirts have the sixth best goals for and against differential in the NHL at plus 33. Their 164 goals are third best in the league; only the Capitals and Penguins have scored more. They are also the only team to have five players with 40 points or more. Their penalty killing is sixth best and they lead the league in short-handed goals. All very impressive stats.

And yet even with all that, this team is still four points behind the Boston Bruins for the last playoff spot in the East Division, with the Bruins having two games at hand. And their 56 points ranks as only 14th best out of 31 teams in the league. That is most certainly NOT very impressive.

So what can we surmise from these two sets of conflicting data? Simply put, the Rangers are two very different teams depending on the opposition. Against opponents that don't cover their own zone very well or prefer to play a wide open brand of hockey, the Rangers do extremely well. Their east/west style of play, so reminiscent of those free-wheeling '80s teams, allows them to generate scoring opportunities that lesser-skilled teams simply cannot compete with. Witness what they did to the Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils, two teams that are to defense what Napoleon was to height. Twice, the Rangers routed the Flyers (9-0 and 8-3), and against the Devils, they swept a recent four-game series in which they did not trail for a single second.

But against the Islanders, Capitals, Bruins and Penguins, teams that are considerably more disciplined in their own end and tend to employ a north/south brand of hockey, the Rangers have had a tough time generating offense. Stars like Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin, deprived of their ability to create off the rush, are reduced to virtual non-factors. For example, so far this season, Zibanejad has scored three hat tricks. The first two came against the Flyers in the above-mentioned routs; the third came against the Sabres this past Sunday. Take away those 9 goals and Zibanejad has a grand total of just 10 goals in 46 games. That comes out to about 18 goals over the course of a full season. And keep in mind, eight of those 46 games were against the Devils, a team they've beaten six times.

Conclusion? This is very talented team with serious flaws that must be addressed in the offseason if it is ever going to become a playoff team, much less a contender. Yes, there are a lot of rookie and second-year players on the roster, but that shouldn't be an excuse. Adam Fox and K'Andre Miller are not the problem here. Nor is Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere. Fox is having a Norris-trophy type season, Miller is fast becoming a dependable defenseman, and Kakko and Lafreniere are improving with each game.

No, it is the core of this team that is the main problem. In short, the stars just aren't pulling their weight. In addition to the issues Zibanejad and Panarin have against tight-checking teams, Chris Kreider is a 210 pound player who plays more like a 170 pounder, which has rightfully earned him a demotion to the third line. Filip Chytil, now in his third season, has yet to blossom into the top-six forward the Rangers were hoping he'd be. And while Ryan Strome has done a good job centering Panarin, he too has a habit of disappearing in big games. Plus next season is his walk year.

With so many red flags, you'd think Jeff Gorton and John Davidson would've gotten the memo by now. Yet every indication is that they don't think there's anything all that wrong, at least not with the forwards anyway. The defense, well that's another matter. 

Larry Brooks of The New York Post is reporting that during the offseason the Rangers made an offer to 43 year-old Zdeno Chara. According to Brooks, it was serious enough that they were "in the hunt until the last minute" before Chara finally decided to sign with the Capitals. Granted, Gorton had no way of knowing that Miller would develop so quickly, but the move reveals both his and the organization's thinking. And that thinking is deeply concerning.

Because this team, even with all its flaws, is still mathematically alive for a playoff spot, and the fear is that coach David Quinn will keep playing the same horses that have consistently come up short in the crunch. Meanwhile, Morgan Barron, a center who had a good year in Hartford and is 220 pounds, still hasn't been called up. Julien Gauthier, a 230 pound winger, hasn't played in weeks because for some strange reason Quinn is still in love with Brett Howden, despite the fact that Howden has a whopping one goal and six assists this season.

There's no other way to put this. Quinn is making a tactical error that may help him in the short run but will come back to bite him in the long run. What he and Gorton should be doing with the remaining games this season is to find out what they have in the cupboard. Barron and Gauthier should be in the lineup and given significant ice time. Vitali Kravtsov should be paired alongside Panarin to see whether he is the real deal. And it is time to find out if Kakko was worth the second overall pick two years ago.

If I were in charge I'd set my lines up this way: 

Forward Line One: Lafreniere, Zibanejad, Kakko

Forward Line Two: Panarin, Chytil, Kravtsov

Forward Line Three: Kreider, Strome, Buchnevich

Forward Line Four: Rooney, Barron, Gauthier

Defense Pairing One: Miller, Trouba

Defense Pairing Two: Jones, Fox

Defense Pairing Three: Lindgren, Smith

By moving Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil and Kravtsov up to the top six, the Rangers will be able to evaluate who will be the odd-man out during the offseason. And make no mistake about it: not all of these forwards are going to be here next season. One or more may be dangled in a trade to get the help this team needs. It is essential that Gorton and Davidson make an "informed" decision before pulling the trigger. What the organization can't afford to do after going through this rebuild process is to have the player or players they give up come back and haunt them for the next decade. It's been 45 years since Rick Middleton was given away for Ken Hodge and 34 years since Mike Ridley and Kelly Miller were sent packing for Bobby Carpenter. Rangers' fans still haven't forgiven the team for those colossal blunders. Some wounds never heal. The goal should be no more blunders.

On defense, Zac Jones has looked real good so far and has even gotten some time on the second power-play unit. He picked up his first assist against the Sabres, Sunday. Pairing him with Fox makes sense. The more ice time this kid gets the better he'll become. And let's not forget that Braden Schneider - all 200 pounds of him - is waiting in the wings. Imagine a one-two punch of Trouba on one defense pairing and Schneider on the next. Not bad. Trust me, defense is the last thing management should be concerned about. They're loaded.

The bottom line is this: The Rangers are not a playoff team. Despite some flashes of brilliance, the sauce isn't quite cooked enough. What management should be doing is getting all their cards lined up so they know whether they have a full house or a pair of duces.

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.

Rangers Are To Blame for DeAngelo Nightmare

Let's be clear, here. The Tony DeAngelo nightmare did not start after Saturday's overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in which the troubled defenseman took a swing at goaltender Alexandar Georgiev over the latter's admittedly costly mistake. Nor did it start with his tweets, which were problematic to say the least.

Indeed, if we're going to be thorough, you could say it began years ago. He was suspended twice in the OHL for slurs and abuse of officials and once in the NHL for actually going after an official. Head coach David Quinn benched him two games for getting hit with a misconduct in the third period of the opening game of the season. Clearly, he was a loose canon just ready to go off.

To be frank, it wasn't just his support for Trump that was a red flag; it was his propensity for trafficking in racist tropes and picking fights with fans on Twitter that should've sounded alarm bells in the bowels of the Ranger organization. It is inconceivable that team president John Davidson and G.M. Jeff Gorton didn't know what was going on, and both must now bear the brunt of the blame for the disaster that the franchise must now deal with.

The decision to sign DeAngelo to a two-year $9.6 million deal is indefensible. Period. Yes, he was a restricted free agent, meaning had the Rangers not made him an offer he probably would've been awarded a one-year arbitration deal. But the Rangers could have walked away from that deal, making him an unrestricted free agent. Had they done that, it is highly unlikely another team would've signed him given that the Rangers were unable to move him during the offseason.

So now Gorton has the unenviable task of trying to get a team - any team - to take the problem child off his hands. Good luck with that. Even a team with the cap space needed to take on DeAngelo's contract will want nothing to do with a player with that much baggage. That means that this team, which is currently playing musical chairs with players on its own taxi squad just to stay in compliance with the league salary cap, will have to buy out yet another contract after this season is over. Oh goodie.

Fortunately for them, because DeAngelo is under the age of 26, they will only have to eat one third of the remaining $5.3 million he's owed on the backloaded contract, which comes out to $883k annually for two years. But the point is they didn't have to go through this. They have two young, promising defensemen in their system - Nils Lundkvist and K'Andre Miller - who are a year away from making the team. They could've moved Brendan Smith over to the right side until Lundkvist is ready to take the reigns. And they would've saved themselves almost $10 million worth of cap space in the process. Cap space they would now give their eye teeth to have.

I have been patient with Davidson and Gorton, primarily because the core they are assembling has the potential to one day be a Stanley Cup contender. But there have been hiccups along the way. The buyout situation is growing alarming. Including Henrik Lundqvist, who was bought out during the off season, the Rangers currently are carrying almost $13 million in dead cap space. And while that number will go down by about $8 million next season, the DeAngelo buyout, if it happens, will bring it back up.

But here's the greater issue. That Davidson and Gorton looked the other way with someone like DeAngelo sends the wrong message, especially to a player like Miller, who is the first African American to wear a Rangers uniform. And Davidson's explanation in his press conference that this was about "freedom of speech" is absurd on its face, something that in his days as a TV analyst he would've decried.

The New York Rangers may not be the most successful hockey organization in the NHL, but even in the days of Sonny Werblin, it would never have allowed something like this to fester within its ranks. Hopefully, the braintrust has learned its lesson and won't repeat this colossal mistake.

End of an Era

It's official: Henrik Lundqvist has been bought out by the New York Rangers. An era has come to an end. 

15 seasons, 459 regular-season wins (6th all time), 61 postseason wins and one Vezina trophy. Had it not been for his acrobatics in the 2014 playoffs, the Rangers would never have made it out of the first round, let alone all the way to the finals.

An argument can be made that, apart from Mark Messier, Lundqvist is the most valuable player ever to wear the uniform. And given how many good players the Blueshirts have had in their proud history, that's quite a statement.

But as valuable and great as the King has been, it was time to turn the page. It was obvious that no team was going to trade for a 38 year-old goaltender, especially one with a $8.5 million cap hit - $4.25 with a 50/50 split - so the Rangers did what they had to do.

And now this team - officially the youngest in the NHL with the trade of Marc Staal to the Detroit Red Wings - has $23 million of available cap space with which to sign their four restricted free agents and maybe even their one unrestricted free agent, assuming GM Jeff Gorton and Jesper Fast can agree on a contract. In short, the Rangers, with the addition of first-round pick Alexis Lafreniere, will field a considerably deeper team next season than the one that was dispatched in three straight by Carolina.

This is a sad day, a bittersweet day, in New York Rangers history. A legend is gone. But it was a day that was a long time coming. Lundqvist was the oldest player from the team that went to two conference finals and one cup final. It never did drink from the Stanley Cup. Hopefully, Gorton and team president John Davidson will assemble a team that can close the deal and capture the championship that alluded its predecessor. 

 

Rangers Can't Afford To Get Sentimental Over Lundqvist

Face it, growing old sucks. Trust me, I know. I'm 59 going on 80. And that's on a good day. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be an athlete and to grow old. The window for a professional athlete is extremely small. Most don't survive for more than a decade without serious decline setting in.

For the better part of 15 years, Henrik Lundqvist has been an elite goaltender who was almost single-handedly responsible for the Rangers advancing to the Stanley Cup finals in 2014. And if his team had managed to protect multiple two-goal leads in games one and two against the Los Angeles Kings, it is quite likely that the Blueshirts would've captured the Cup that year and the King, as he has come to be affectional called, would've been awarded the Conn-Smyth trophy.

Alas, that wasn't the case. The Rangers blew those two-goal leads and with it the series, losing in five. The following year (2014-15) the team won the President's trophy only to lose to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the conference finals. From there, it's been all downhill. Back-to-back early exits in the first and second rounds respectively, followed by a two-year hiatus from the playoffs altogether.

All that brings us to this past season. A young coach and a very young team with an aging goalie, who looks more like a backup than a perineal Vezina trophy winner. Were Lundqvist making what most backups make, he'd be a steal. But with a salary cap hit of $8.5 million, he's a luxury this team can no longer afford.

In an earlier piece, I wrote that the Rangers had approximately $13 million available cap space with which to sign their RFAs and UFAs. In actuality, it's $14 million, so they shouldn't have all that much difficulty, right?

Wrong.

Turns out I neglected to factor in all those ELCs that the team is carrying. What is an ELC, you ask? That would be an entry level contract, and the Rangers have a boat load of them. While on the surface, it may seem as though players on entry level deals are quite cheap insofar as the cap is concerned, if you look under the hood, they're not quite as cheap as you might suspect.

That's because virtually all ELCs carry what's called a performance bonus that if a player hits, entitles him to additional money. And that additional money, as you might expect, gets added to the cap. According to Capfriendly, the Rangers would need to set aside roughy $7 million in cap space if all their ELCs were to hit their bonus levels.

How likely is that to happen? Let's put it this way, would you want to take a chance that Igor Shesterkin wins the Vezina and Kaapo Kakko scores something like 80 points and have to pay out more than $5 million in bonuses between them, only to find out you don't have enough cap room and are now relying on the benevolence of Gary Bettman to avoid what will almost assuredly be a substantial penalty? I sure as shit wouldn't.

So, long story short, that $14 million is now, for all intents and purposes, $7 million, which barely covers the cost of re-signing Ryan Strome and Brendan Lemieux. The former is an absolute must. There's no way this team can afford to go into next season without a number two center, not unless you think Filip Chytil is ready to assume those duties. And from what we saw last season, that would be an enormous risk, one that the franchise would be reckless to take. You don't commit $11 million a year to arguably the best left wing in the NHL in Artemi Panarin and not have a legitimate center to feed him the puck. Strome and Panarin were - to coin a phrase from the movie Forrest Gump - peas and carrots. You don't split that pair up unless you're pretty damn sure you have someone in the wings who can step right in and assume the role.

So let's say Strome agrees to a two-year bridge deal for $5 million a year, and Lemieux re-signs for, say, $2 million. Now what? You're at your cap limit, and you still have at least two players left to sign. Without shedding some salary, you're basically rolling the dice hoping your young players under perform. But what would be the point of that? Either these last three years have been worth it or they haven't. The truth is nothing would accelerate this rebuild more than to see Kakko have a breakout season alongside Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider.

And let's not forget, there will be one pretty substantial young player joining the team next season: Alexis Lafreniere, the overall number one pick. And unless the scouting reports on this kid are severely off, he will likely hit his performance bonus with room to spare, meaning the Rangers would need to set aside at least $2 million for him, not the standard $925,000.

You can see where this is going. If it sucks getting old, imagine what it must be like being the GM of the second youngest team in the league with a lot of holes to fill and not enough available cap space to fill them.

That's why it is imperative that the Rangers buy out Lundqvist's contract. Sure it adds more dead cap space to an already mountainous total, but Gorton has no other choice. He needs the $3 million in cap relief to help him fill out his roster, and even then, he'll have to get creative.

This is the part of the game nobody likes. A player who has given everything he can for an organization that came up short twice and is now on the verge of putting together a core that will hopefully be together for many years, is now the square peg in a round hole, and that sucks. If there was another way to do this, I'm sure the Rangers would've found it by now. 

He isn't going to retire, nor should he, and in a league with a flat cap and with several teams needing to shed salary themselves, no one is going to trade for a 38 year-old goaltender that is at least two years removed from elite status. Even with the Rangers picking up half the tab, you're still talking about $2.75 million. Think about it this way: the Rangers will likely have to fork over $2 million just to re-sign Alexandar Georgiev, and he's 24. Get the idea?

It's been a nice career for Hendrik Lundqvist; a brilliant career, in fact. As I've said before, he's the best Ranger never to win a Stanley Cup, but it's time to move on. Gorton knows it and so does Lundqvist.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially when it's bittersweet.

Post script, 

Breaking News: the Rangers announced Saturday that they have traded defenseman Marc Staal and a 2021 second-round draft pick to the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for future considerations. Staal was in the final year of a contract that paid him $5.7 million. Detroit was able to absorb the full amount of Staal's cap hit because they were significantly under the minimum and actually needed to add salary.

Given this development, the Rangers might decided not to buy out Lundqvist but I would still do it. The added cap space would help them acquire a solid left-handed defense partner for Jacob Trouba - Vince Dunn? - and allow them to re-sign Tony DeAngelo who had a good year offensively last season.

Major Decisions for Rangers This Offseason

Over the next couple of months, the New York Rangers will have to make a number of major and tough decisions regarding how this team will look once the 2020-21 season gets underway. John Davidson and Jeff Gorton have their work cut out for them.

A number of sports "analysts" have chimed in with their opinions, and with the rare exception or two, you can tell none of them have ever run a professional sports franchise. That notwithstanding, I thought I'd dip my big toe into the pool and see if I drown. Spoiler alert, I don't swim.

The Number One Pick: Under no circumstances should Davidson and company trade this pick, not even for the proverbial king's ransom, which for the record hardly ever resembles a ransom, much less a king's one. I've seen most of the prosed trade packages and not one of them makes sense, not even the one involving the Senators sending the Rangers the number three pick along with Brady Tkaczuk in exchange for the number one. No disrespect to Tkaczuk, who is a solid two-way forward, but at best he's a 25 goal scorer. You don't trade the overall number one pick for a player you can get in the middle of the first round in any given year.

Even if Alexis Lafreniere isn't the second coming of Jaromir Jagr, he's still better than anyone the Blueshirts have at left wing, including, dare I say it, Artemi Panarin. The moment he steps onto the Garden ice, he instantly becomes one of the best forwards on this team, and if he does in fact become the next Jagr, he will be the generational player this franchise hasn't had since the days of Mark Messier. Only a fool would trade that away, and I don't believe either Davidson or Gorton are fools.

Second-Line Center: Do the Rangers re-sign Ryan Strome or do they look elsewhere? I know I've beaten this like a dead horse, but thanks to the Kevin Shattenkirk buyout last year, the Rangers will have just north of $13 million in available cap space to attempt to resign four RFAs and one UFA. That's not a lot of space, given that Strome is arbitration eligible and will likely command a hefty raise from last year's $3.1 million contract.

If the braintrust decides to look elsewhere, the pickins are slim. A trade for the rights to Tampa Bay Lightning center Anthony Cirelli - the current fave of the peanut gallery - will come with a huge price tag. The Lightning will almost certainly demand something close to equal value in return, and that return has to something they can retain given their own cap problems, which are considerably worse than the Rangers. I'm thinking Filip Chytil and Vitali Kravtsov. Assuming the Blueshirts say yes, which they shouldn't, they will likely have to pony up about $6 million per over the next six years. That's roughly 45 percent of the available cap space. And I'm not even sure Cirelli is worth that kind of money given that he's scored a measly 5 points in 13 playoff games and he's currently the number two center on this team with Steven Stamkos out with an injury.

The smart move is to re-sign Strome to a two-year bridge deal for about $5.5 million per until you find out if Chytil is the real deal or not. If Strome doesn't pan out, you can always leave him exposed in next year's expansion draft. Hell, he's already been on three teams in five years, what's one more team in the grand scheme of things?

Henrik Lundqvist: Let's not beat around the bush. With the exception of Messier and Brian Leetch, no one has done more for this franchise over the last 30 years than The King. He deserves a better fate than the one that's currently awaiting him, which is to be a backup for 24 year-old Igor Shesterkin. Gorton has already said the Rangers will not go into camp with three goalies, so assuming they sign Alexandar Georgiev, that means Lundqvist is the odd man out.

The only question remaining is whether Lundqvist retires, which would give the Blueshirts all $8.5 million of his cap hit to play with, or he gets bought out, which would leave $5.5 million on the books next season and $1.5 million on the books for 2021-22. Obviously, the former would be a dream come true, but seriously, if you were Lundqvist would you leave that kind of money on the table knowing that you might be out of hockey next year? I sure as shit wouldn't.

With trade options severely limited by 1. Lundqvist's age (38) and 2. his no trade clause, the consensus is that he will be bought out. And that would mean the Rangers would be carrying a staggering sum of $13 million in dead cap space going into next season; 16 percent of the NHL salary cap. Anyway you slice it, that's insane. This is what happens when you sign players in their 30s to very long contracts with no movement clauses.

Lack of Toughness: Unless you believe in flukes, what you saw in Toronto was a Rangers team that got bounced around by the Hurricanes. We saw this all too many times throughout the season: a team with very creative forwards that wasn't adept enough to win the battles in the trenches. More often than not, the goaltending saved their bacon, but not in the Qualifying round. When push came to shove, the Blueshirts got handed their lunch and dinner with dessert on the side.

Obviously, the team needs a transfusion of toughness in order to succeed in the postseason. Perhaps Gorton can trade Pavel Buchnevich - who's in his walk year anyway - for a scrappy winger who isn't afraid to take a hit or initiate one. Or he can just promote a couple of the meatier forwards already in the system like Morgan Barron and Austin Rueschhoff, both of whom can play either center or wing and weigh 220 pounds each. Combined with Julien Gauthier, another 220 pound winger that was obtained from the Hurricanes last year, and Brendon Lemieux - a must sign - the Blueshirts could finally be the team with a chip on its shoulder instead of the other way around. I firmly believe that when it comes to hits, it is far better to give than to receive.

Left Defense: It's no secret that the left side of this defense after Ryan Lindgren is a major liability. Both Marc Staal and Brendan Smith are over 30 and at least two seasons removed from being legit starting defensemen. Staal, in particular, was about as slow as a freight train stuck on the 7th Avenue Express. The good news is that both players are in the last year of their contracts, which means they will be gone after next season. The bad news is that their contracts - $5.7 and $4.35 million for Staal and Smith respectively - make it virtually impossible for them to be traded, even with the Rangers absorbing half of the load. So what to do?

Well call me a fool, but I believe in improving where you can. With the recent, shall we say, "issues" in Arizona, the Coyotes find themselves with no first round pick in either this or next year's draft. The Rangers could dangle the number one pick they got from the Carolina Hurricanes in the Brady Skjei deal for 22 year-old left-handed defensemen Jakob Chychrun. He would instantly become their best left-handed defenseman and coach David Quinn could pair him with Jacob Trouba to make a formidable tandem. And since he's already signed to a team-friendly $4.6 million for the next five seasons, he would help solidify the one glaring weakness this team had throughout the season.

If Chychrun isn't available, the Rangers should give St. Louis a call and inquire about Vince Dunn, another solid left-handed defenseman who may be too expensive for the Blues to keep. Dunn is an RFA, so Gorton would have to come to terms with him once the two teams agreed on a trade, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 to $5 million per over six years should suffice. Either player would instantly slide into the number one pairing and become a staple to this beleaguered defensive corps.

Lindgren and Adam Fox would remain the second defensive pairing, and Quinn could move Smith to the right side on the third pairing, where he's played before. Staal and Libor Hajek would then alternate on the left side. When K'Andre Miller is ready (2021-22) he would take over on the left side, and if there's no one inside the organization that can step in to play the right side, they could always look outside via a trade or signing. Don't forget, most of that dead cap space will be gone after next year.

Obviously, Deangelo would be the casualty in this scenario, but if that's what it takes to shore up your top two defensive lines, then so be it. Besides, Deangelo, apart from his scoring prowess, brings a lot of baggage with him, and he's not exactly Larry Robinson on the blue line, if you know what I mean.

I'm sure there are a few other minor issues Gorton will have to attend to, but these are the biggies, as I see them. If the Rangers solve these problems, they will be able to accelerate their rebuilding process and maybe even challenge for the Cup next season.

Rangers Get the Break of a Lifetime

Well that was quite a turnaround. In less than a week, the New York Rangers went from a franchise that had just been humiliated by the Carolina Hurricanes in three straight to a franchise that just been humiliated by the Carolina Hurricanes in three straight but who won the NHL draft lottery. That's right, the second youngest team in the NHL with an average age of 25.7 years - the Blackhawks are the youngest at 25.6 - will get the honor of selecting Alexis Lafreniere with the number one pick. That's assuming John Davidson and Jeff Gorton don't lapse into the same coma their team was in last week and choose someone else.

Look, there's no way to sugar coat what happened in Toronto. In a word, it was dreadful. The Blueshirts played a total of two solid periods of hockey in the entire series, and in neither did they emerge with a lead. In fact, the Hurricanes pretty much dictated play at both ends of the ice.

I spoke about goaltending as being one of the keys to this series, and that proved to be the case. Unfortunately, it was the tandem of Petr Mrazek and James Reimer (who hadn't started a playoff game in seven years) that stole the show. Henrik Lundqvist, who was a surprise starter in games one and two when Igor Shesterkin was ruled ineligible due to a groin pull, was average at best.

Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Hart Trophy finalist Artemi Panerin scored one goal a piece; the latter coming on a five on three power play advantage. It would be the only power play goal the Rangers would score in the series after going 5 for 15 against Carolina during the regular season. By comparison, the top line of Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and Teuvo Teravainen accounted for seven goals. In the end, it wasn't as close as the games' final scores would indicate.

Clearly the rebuild that started two seasons ago still has a ways to go. Davidson and Gorton have a lot of tough questions that need answering and not a whole lot of time to get them. For instance, how much stock do they put into those three games in Toronto? Was the second-half run a tease or the real deal? Does this core, as presently constructed, have what it takes to make a deep run in the playoffs? Which players do they keep and which do they show the door?

If management feels that the Hurricane series was an aberration, they will face a daunting task during the offseason. The Rangers will be carrying about $7.5 million in dead cap space next season, most of it courtesy of the Kevin Shattenkirk buyout last year. Including existing contracts, they will have just over $13 million in available cap space with which to sign RFAs Tony DeAngelo, Ryan Strome, Brendan Lemieux and Alexandar Georgiev, UFAs Jesper Fast and Greg McKegg and rookie Lafreniere. Thankfully, Lafreniere will only cost them $925,000. By the way, that supposes the kid actually plays with the big club next season. For argument's sake, let's just pencil him into the starting lineup, either on the second or third lines.

You can see the dilemma here. DeAngelo and Strome will command the lion's share of the available cap space: DeAngelo at roughly $3 mil and Strome coming in around $5. That leaves about $4 million to divvy up among the rest. Unless Lundqvist retires - a long shot - or the Rangers decide to buy him out - unwise - at least two of the aforementioned free agents will be playing for another team next season.

Frankly, depending on Lundqvist to bail out his bosses when they tossed him aside for a younger model is wishful thinking. That leaves a buyout. But before they take on more dead cap space, they should consider trading Pavel Buchnevich. Freeing up his $3.25 million salary would allow the team to promote minor leaguers like Libor Hajek, K'Andre Miller and Vitali Kravtsov. Buchnevich had a good year, but let's face it, there are players already in the system that could easily take his place. Kaapo Kakko would be an ideal choice. He was one of the few Rangers who distinguished himself against the Hurricanes last week; another was Jacob Trouba.

The Rangers should also consider moving Marc Staal, even if it means eating half of his $5.7 million contract. I suspect there are plenty of teams who'd be willing to take on an experienced defenseman for $2.85 million. Hajek and Miller both deserve a chance to prove what they can do. Having said that, I'd keep Brendan Smith. He can play both the wing and defense on either side and he's more affordable.

Moving Staal and Buchenevich, and allowing Fast to walk, would save approximately $6 million in cap space and allow Davidson and Gorton to keep this core intact. In that event, just imagine what next year's lineup could look like.

Forward Line One: 

Panarin, Strome, Kakko

Forward Line Two: 

Lafreniere, Zibanejad, Kreider

Forward Line Three:

Howden, Chytil, Kravtsov

Forward Line Four:

Lemieux, McKegg, Gauthier 

Defense Pairing One:

Lindgren, Fox

Defense Pairing Two:

Hajek, Trouba

Defense Pairing Three

Miller, DeAngelo

Goaltenders

Shesterkin, Georgiev

Time will tell what moves Davidson and Gorton end up making. But this much is certain: with Lafreniere as their number one pick and a solid core in place, this team just moved one step closer to being a contender and should be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.