Confirmed with Link: McDonagh + Miller to Tampa Bay for Namestnikov + Howden + Hajek + 2018 1st + conditional 2019 1st

[Kakko Schmakko]

Did Rangers feel like McD is declining especially with his goalscoring this season or they were fed up with his plethora of injuries?

 

[Edge]

Did Rangers feel like McD is declining especially with his goalscoring this season or they were fed up with his plethora of injuries?

I think it was all about the next contract.

I don’t think there was anything particularly alarming about his play, even if it wasn’t quite on the same level as what he showed in 13-14.

I do think there was a hesitation to go long-term and big money for him as he entered his 30s due to mileage, accumulated injuries and diminishing higher end ability.

 

[Alluckks]

Based on what?

Development - Howden is crushing right now, but we have to see if that is because of his age/size. He had 4 points in 5 AHL game last year, but that is a small sample.

Hajek has plenty of raw talent. Let's see how it develops.

 

[egelband]

The only buzz around McD was really just Yzerman. This was a good time to to trade rentals. But I am surprised no team wanted Desharnais even for a late round pick, their scouts must have a clue unlike ours. What I hate about rebuilds is they start great then by July 3rd we got a bunch garbage UFAs that they couldn't help signing and not good players, more like has beens and reclamation projects who will play instead of the prospects. So I no longer believe in this team being capable of sticking to rebuild.

I may be totally ignorant but I kinda think that teams might have been interested a bit in DD but it just wasn’t a priority. Like, they were getting higher priority deals sorted and just never got to upgrading their 12th or 13th forward. I think DD is probably good enough to get something in return. Just wasn’t anyone’s priority.

 

[Kakko Schmakko]

I think it was all about the next contract.

I don’t think there was anything particularly alarming about his play, even if it wasn’t quite on the same level as what he showed in 13-14.

I do think there was a hesitation to go long-term and big money for him as he entered his 30s due to mileage, accumulated injuries and diminishing higher end ability.

yeah, long term contracts in general just don't work out well. Hopefully they win the Cup, (they got both of our captains) and we get their 1st rounder.

 

[duhmetreE]

I hope TBL win the cup this year... We get the 2019 1st.

At that point, there could be a Stanley Cup hangover and a few injuries away from a potential 'lottery pick'. How sweet that would be... to have the 2019 TB 1st turn into Jack Hughes. /endfanfiction

 

[Kakko Schmakko]

good to see that the Callahan signing is working out great for them

 

[Gresch04]

The certainty with which people talk about the unknowable never ceases to amuse me. I'm a 40 year fan. Saw some of the most unimaginably bad deals over that time. Carpenter, Dionne, Espo, and on and on. Trading a #1 and $75,000 for a coach was fabulous, probably the low point. Couple this horrible history with the desire to be marketable but not necessarily great given the NYC market and you have 39 years of crap and 1 year of amazing in my fan-time.

This is the FIRST time the team seems committed to a rebuild. The first time not going for the brainless quick fix. The first time seeking young assets and picks to reset the prospect pool and build from within. I couldn't be happier.

Has the return been astronomical? No. It's been fair. It's easy to understand the disappointment. We tend to overrate what we have and dismiss the unknowable - how people will develop and evolve over the course of 2-5 years. So unless the trade is clear robbery, it's safer to call it garbage. Especially when prospects don't always work out, we feel smarter when we say "I told you so" years from now. I understand human nature.

When the dust settles, all the players are integrated, some are traded, the picks are leveraged for more assets or developed, and the team evolves, I hope we finally have a home grown winner. Like Tampa Bay is on the cusp of being right now - through smart maneuvering and patience. I'll take the ride awaiting us 1,000 times over versus the horrible grind it's been for 39 of the last 40 years with mediocrity, a few flashes of "close but no cigar", and mostly a giant pile of nothing special (aka sh#t).

Try to enjoy the reboot. It's long overdue, it might actually work, and diehard fans DESERVE IT.

 

[Clark Kellogg]

Montreal picked up a point last night. If the stars all align in our favor we could end up fourth from the bottom.

 

[egelband]

I think it was all about the next contract.

I don’t think there was anything particularly alarming about his play, even if it wasn’t quite on the same level as what he showed in 13-14.

I do think there was a hesitation to go long-term and big money for him as he entered his 30s due to mileage, accumulated injuries and diminishing higher end ability.

Yep. I think they have learned their lesson with the ‘reward’ contracts. It’s a shame, because these guys all earned their big deals. But the cap forces teams to be so cutthroat. I guess that’s collective bargaining.

 

[egelband]

Well said, Gresch!

 

[Beacon]

When you have an ocean losing a few buckets of water is fine.

When you have just 1 glass and are thirsty....it's a very different story.

They are a deeeeeep team with a deeeeeeep farm. It happens when you suck every other year AND draft terrific in later rounds.

We need to start being like them.

So to summarize: Everyone us wrong. TBL fans are wrong, neutral fans are wrong, our fans were wrong when expecting returns. Literally everyone is wrong. There is an excuse for everyone being wrong rather than a possibility that Gorts shat his bed.

 

[Idlerlee]

Miller gets to play on a team with some of the absolute best players in the world. He must be giddy as f***.

 

[Beacon]

Names roughly equal to Spoon.
Firsts are about the same (the Boston one likely to be higher)
Rykov+Lindgren roughly equal to Hajek
The second we got from the Devils is roughly equal to the conditional 1st or 2nd because depending on the condition being realized (and it's a pretty high bar to win the Cup), it would be half a round earlier or later.

You can argue about the above, who is better, but it's in the same ballpark. So that leaves McDonagh and Miller getting only Howden more than Nash+Grabs rentals got. Spectacular value there [sarcasm]. Granted we picked up some salary for Nash, but we gave up 2 guys in their prime who are not rentals for two rentals on the wrong side of 30. The difference is roughly Howden. He better turn into Getzlaf for this to make any sense. I suspect, however, he's ultimately a run of the mill forward.

 

[Beacon]

Another way of looking at it, we got roughly the same for McDonagh, a non-rental, as we got for a 36 year old rental Brian Leetch: 1, 2 and a pair of good, but unspectacular D+F prospects. Except we also downgraded Miller for Names. Sure you now know that Kondratiev and Immonen busted (and we all know there's no chance of Howden, Hijak or any of our current prospects going bust), but at the time, they were seen as A- prospects. In fact, the first rounder we got was known from the start to likely be higher than Tampa's one. I don't want to hear comments, "at the time we got 1+2 and a pair of minor leaguers" because that's 20-20 vision. The 2 prospects we got in 2004 were viewed at the time about the same as the 2 prospects we got now.

So a 36-year-old Leetch rental brings in what a 28-year-old McDonagh non-rental brings us, except Leetch returned a better first rounder and we downgraded our forwards (Miller/Names). And that 2004 trade was never seen as a big win for the Rangers. FML.

 

[Machinehead]

Did Rangers feel like McD is declining
especially with his goalscoring this season or they were fed up with his plethora of injuries?

Well let me preface by saying that I advocated keeping him, but I do understand where the team is coming from.

I think the issue is, he's not what he was from 2012-2014 because of the injuries, but we would be paying him for 2012-2014. That's just how UFA contracts work and that's what agents get paid to do.

I think probably 80% of the UFA's in the league are overpaid, even the ones that stay with their teams. It's a competitive market so you pay for reputation and you pay to outbid the several other teams interested.

Sometimes you take that risk, but that's a different debate.

 

[Alluckks]

Names roughly equal to Spoon.
Firsts are about the same (the Boston one likely to be higher)
Rykov+Lindgren roughly equal to Hajek
The second we got from the Devils is roughly equal to the conditional 1st or 2nd because depending on the condition being realized (and it's a pretty high bar to win the Cup), it would be half a round earlier or later.

You can argue about the above, who is better, but it's in the same ballpark. So that leaves McDonagh and Miller getting only Howden more than Nash+Grabs rentals got. Spectacular value there [sarcasm]. Granted we picked up some salary for Nash, but we gave up 2 guys in their prime who are not rentals for two rentals on the wrong side of 30. The difference is roughly Howden. He better turn into Getzlaf for this to make any sense. I suspect, however, he's ultimately a run of the mill forward.

Alright buddy, you done now?

No one is conversing with you anymore on this. Go write in your diary.

 

[Beacon]

A lot of the players the Rangers have drafted or traded for (Andersson, Howden, Hajek, Rykov, Lindgren) seem to be guys who are not flashy players, but do subtle things well, are strong defensively, have high character, and are often very productive.

The general idea for GMs is that you need to start a flow of consistent youth at the beginning of rebuilding. You can't afford to have too many boom/bust guys for the fear that you will wind up with nothing 3 years into rebuilding, which pretty much guarantees that not only will you get fired, but you'll never get hired by anyone ever again. Nobody wants to risk wiping out his career with a couple moves that don't work out.

So they start acquiring middle-6 forwards and middle pair defensemen, thinking they still have years more of rebuilding ahead of them when hopefully they'll get lucky with someone exceeding expectations and becoming really good. If not, they can take chances later and if they fail, they 1) are not running an awful team anymore; 2) they can say, "sure we missed on McIlrath, but at least we got Dubi, Cally, Staal, McDonagh, Girardi, Kreider, all types of other young players, and everyone misses sometimes."

Ultimately you can't win the Cup without a 1-2 punch of legit superstars in addition to good depth. Hopefully the acquisition of a bunch of "safe" prospects will allow the Rangers to take chances with boom/bust guys. I suspect that if we didn't make the Stepan trade to then draft Lias, we don't draft Chytil at 21, going for a safer kid at that point. With 3 picks in the first rounds and 7 in the first 3 rounds, hopefully Gorts has the courage to go for more Chytils, knowing that some of them will turn into Jessimans. The recent acquisitions of Lias, ADA, Pionk, Vinni, Georgiev, Howden, Hajek, Rykov, Lindgren, as well as the success (so far) of Chytil will hopefully make it easier for Gorts to be brave.

 

[Black Tank]

Did Rangers feel like McD is declining especially with his goalscoring this season or they were fed up with his plethora of injuries?

He was going to demand and get a mega contract and frankly despite all the man crushes from Rangers fans, McD is not good enough to take the Rangers to a Cup victory. This has been empirically demonstrated by his failure to step up in the POs the last few years. There is no point sticking with players, the "core" if you will, if they cannot advance beyond the Conference series grind.

This is what Gorton's letter was telling us: screw your mancrushes, they are not good at winning the Cup and we're getting rid of them. It worked for me and I'm ready for a clean break and a gamble on something new.

 

[keith hernandez]

Another way of looking at it, we got roughly the same for McDonagh, a non-rental, as we got for a 36 year old rental Brian Leetch: 1, 2 and a pair of good, but unspectacular D+F prospects. Except we also downgraded Miller for Names. Sure you now know that Kondratiev and Immonen busted (and we all know there's no chance of Howden, Hijak or any of our current prospects going bust), but at the time, they were seen as A- prospects. In fact, the first rounder we got was known from the start to likely be higher than Tampa's one. I don't want to hear comments, "at the time we got 1+2 and a pair of minor leaguers" because that's 20-20 vision. The 2 prospects we got in 2004 were viewed at the time about the same as the 2 prospects we got now.

So a 36-year-old Leetch rental brings in what a 28-year-old McDonagh non-rental brings us, except Leetch returned a better first rounder and we downgraded our forwards (Miller/Names). And that 2004 trade was never seen as a big win for the Rangers. FML.

Could it be that the leafs didn't look past the name?

 

[keith hernandez]

Possibly just like Boston overpaid for Nash? Who knows, we'll all find out in a few years but that's the fun of message boards

 

[Mikos87]

Lets say the Rangers miss on Rasmus, but land a top 4 pick.

You are golden with what's on the board there.

IMO, this org has done a very poor job of collecting RH shots.

GMs want a premium for that in deals. The Rangers had a lot of success with just LH shots, but that was years ago.

If you look at how Tampa and Nashville funnel pucks, they have the One T option open and clean.

The Rangers need to start getting those players. My only gripe about the sell off has been the lack of RH shots being brought in.

 

[darko]

From what I've heard Hajek projects as a top-4 d-man and Howden projects as a very good middle-6 player. More of a 2nd liner than a 3rd. What we get with that 1st rounder will determine whether we did well or not. Hopefully Tampa wins the Cup and we get their 1st in 19 as well. Nail one of those picks and it's looking like a very good deal all of a sudden.

Say we land someone like Chytil with 2018 1st rounder. Chytil/Howden/Hajek + a conditional pick is a very good return.

 

[darko]

The part of the trade I'm not overly thrilled with is Miller/Namestnikov swap. Maybe I'm biased but i think Miller is a slightly better player. Hoping to be proven wrong.

 

[egelband]

Could it be that the leafs didn't look past the name?

Sounds right. Also there was no salary cap back then. Teams weren’t quite as enamored with draft picks and younger players then.