I'm in the boat of firing the coach, bringing in a FULL STAFF in HFD... you can't tell me the Rangers can't afford that. Major league oversight by whoever is running HFD.
Follow the Syracuse model, get 4A insulation at every position who are in the 24-29 range, some character veterans who can take care of the guys in the locker room and off the ice.
I'd look at Juniors to see if there is a bright coach there that wants to make the pro ranks.
I'm generally in agreement about the 4A guys, but I still don't think it was the primary reason this season sucked. Cole Schneider, Peter Holland, and Bobby Butler were all good 4A guys. Beleskey is at least a solid middle-six 4A guy. Shawn O'Donnell isn't a "good" player but he is a very good 4th line player who provides leadership and grit. Butler and Schneider were supposed to help be leaders as well. You could have added one more guy, I guess, but they had quite a few prospects they wanted to get in that lineup:
Lettieri, Meskanen, Gettinger, Fontaine, Andersson eventually, Lindqvist to start, Gropp, Ronning
And then of course you had Fogarty and Nieves who needed to play, both of whom are good AHL players if nothing else. So up front, they were kind of stuck. They would have had to make an early assessment that someone like Ronning or even Gropp (who has actually shown some development) would need to play primarily in the ECHL. Otherwise they'd have too many forwards.
The defense was similar--Hajek, Bigras and Lindgren really needed to play; Gilmour is a great 4A point-producer even if his defense sucks; O'Gara is 25 and was being leaned on to really solidify that group; and then you had projects like Day and Crawley that the team still seems to like. I could see adding one guy here, but there's really not much room for more.
Tokarski and Mazanec in goal should have been fine. Not great, not the team's primary strength, but certainly good enough to push for a playoff spot.
Unfortunately, Butler sucked. Beleskey has been up and down. Lindqvist left, and Andersson pouted after being sent back down. Gettinger was doing very well until his dreaded "upper body injury," and it's taken him until recently to really get back to form. Gropp seemed to regress offensively and Ronning isn't ready to play in the AHL. Hajek has had a tough adjustment, Bigras stagnated, O'Gara hasn't been as good as he should be, Day has done little until the past few weeks, and Crawley is meh. The goalies have underwhelmed, including Georgiev when he's down here.
It's why I'm more critical of the coaching than the roster construction. I think the roster was sufficient to win. Maybe they could have swung a trade for another 4A guy when they saw things were getting bad (instead we traded Schneider...). Otherwise, it just feels like another situation where McCambridge is like Company Man Ken in that he doesn't get anything more out of his players, just the bare minimum. No one exceeds expectations. Everyone hits them or falls short. A good coach can get his guys to play a little above their heads. I don't think McCambridge can do it.