I wonder the psychology of Gorton on what he's seeing. Tons of picks he's traded for with good players. He swung for Howden and Hajek in the biggest trade of his career. He brought in a pest like Lemieux that teams were inquiring about right after we got him. He traded Joey Keane for the best shot at some offensive prospects he could muster in Gauthier. Just about every roster player he's traded for in hopes of being the depth in our rebuild or at least valuable pieces that can be flipped has turned out poorly. I'd reckon with the trade market being what it is, we're going to be much better off getting a new coach and seeing these players under an NHL coach before we start shipping off a slew of under performing 1st rounders.
It's hard to say though. This season is so chaotic in every respect, that it's going to take its toll on the youngest team in the league that also happens to be in the most stacked division in the league.
It's been a bit of a circus, starting with the first game where DeAngelo took a 4 minute minor penalty. And since then, the team has had moments of defensive excellence, but has also been a bit all over the road. They've lost a ton of games where they played well enough to win too. Then there was about a week or two where they played with zero confidence and couldn't score at all.
You had arguably your best player with COVID-19 deep into training camp who has been struggling to score after a 41 goal season, an offense generating defensemen who got into a fistfight with the goalie then kicked off the team, then your other best player with an injury and then involved in an international political incident (you just can't make this stuff up), you also lost your top paid defensemen for 4-6 weeks due to a broken thumb, and you lose arguably your hottest center in Chytil for 4-6 weeks just as he was starting to play some high-tempo hockey.
The unique elements of this season meant that the deepest team was going to be the strongest, since the roster was always going to be somewhat depleted, but I just think that lends more of an advantage to older, more experienced teams. Rangers, even at their most successful last season, were not a deep team. Zib, Panarin, DeAngelo and Kreider generated most of the offense. And that was pretty much it.
There are certain things you can easily blame on Quinn, and I won't pretend to know whether he's actually doing a good job or not. But you also have to scratch your head and wonder whether anyone could genuinely do any better given the circumstances so far.