The Rangers didn't do themselves any favors with some of the contracts they handed out to Panarin and Trouba. The 7 year contract to Kreider.
The Rangers do need to become a bigger and tougher team to play against. They aren't winning anything with all skill guys.
Sure, and that's why I said, adding some grit and toughness is good.
Signing Goodrow, everyone loved that move. It was great value in trade and at least decent value in contract. Trading Buch for Blais? Everyone hated it. It was terrible value in trade. Buch was an asset that should have been used to upgrade center, or should have been flipped for max draft picks so that those draft picks could have been moved for a center (or trade up to select one, or accumulate extra picks in next year's draft, etc).
So why did they make such a terrible trade? It's because they are hyper fixated to the point of organizational blindness on this concept of "Must. Get. Toffer."
Adding grit is fine. Getting tougher to play against is fine. Making terrible trades and ignoring that you have the most important position on the ice that still desperately needs an injection of at least one if not two talented, skilled players (they can also be well rounded and defensively minded, but they have to have skill as well), is a complete failure. F-.
We will see what Drury can pull out of his hat but he's either going to have to get Eichel for a song, or come up with some other kind of trade that he can win unforseen (like Brassard for Mika). Trading a package of firsts, Lundkvist and other prospects for Larkin is not a great solution anymore than overpaying for Eichel is.
I loved signing Panarin because he had a combination of enough youth, lack of wear on his treads, and a gameplay style that should translate to high-level production until his mid-to-late thirties, that he could be a guy who was still projectable as a top-line or top-6 player when Kakko and Lafreniere are 25.
Kreider's deal never made any sense on any level in that regard. Forget "how could we know" we'd win the lottery. We didn't know. We still should have known it was an awful idea, because we still should have known we had Panarin, Buch, Kakko and Kravtsov in hand on the wing, and we still should have know that the priority was acquiring a center. Terrible signing all the way around.
Trouba was more forgivable because who knew about Fox or Lundkvist at that time? No one. But by the same token, clinging to him like he's irreplaceable should no longer be on the table. He was paid to be our #1RD. He's now been clearly surpassed by a Norris winner who is going to be here forever. He's moveable. He's especially moveable because you have a clone in Schneider in the pipeline and apparently not that far away.
You can't monetize Trouba for a center? He doesn't have any value? Nonsense. They haven't tried. Because they don't want to try. Because they don't have their priorities straight. Which should be, long term contender, get a long term center or two in here. Not more gritty wingers like Othmann.
Unless and until Drury can solve this glaring problem, the firing of Gorton, who apparently did know that he still needed to be taking it patiently and adding more talent to the forward corps, will be a Greek f***ing tragedy for this team's hopes of winning Cups the next decade.
