Speculation: Roster Building Thread - Part XIII (Nanaki edition)

will1066

Registered User
Oct 12, 2008
48,370
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Let’s see a shot of those donuts in the box
1000015868.jpg

I pulled out the box and the test tubes collapsed. Oops.
 

effen

Registered User
Feb 3, 2018
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except Pinto doesnt want to be there long term
The idea he wouldnt is based off the minimum contract they signed him to after his ELC when they knew his suspension was in the works... Which they promptly made up for with a totally undeserved 2/7.5M deal.

They still have a year of control after that too. He's staying.
 

lakeshirts37

Registered User
Jun 25, 2019
1,122
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The idea he wouldnt is based off the minimum contract they signed him to after his ELC when they knew his suspension was in the works... Which they promptly made up for with a totally undeserved 2/7.5M deal.

They still have a year of control after that too. He's staying.
👍
 

Shesterkybomb

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Dec 30, 2016
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It's a leak from Drury himself to kick these guys in the ass a bit. I doubt anything of substance happens during the year. The draft and offseason are completely different animals though.
The team is beyond that point, the patience is wearing thin, they already did the threat thing with Trouba in the offseason. Even trouba admitted that this might be the last kick at the can with this core to start the season
 

Oscar Lindberg

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Dec 14, 2015
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Larry can f*** off putting that article beyond the Post’s paywall. Means he’s got nothing but needed to push something out

Here is the interesting bits from the Athletic article

Putting those two prominent Rangers on the trading block 19 games into the season signifies that Drury believes the team’s core needs a major adjustment. Even short of a trade, sending that information out to all the other NHL GMs guarantees that word will get out publicly, as it did in fairly short order.

So if, as seems likely, this was a way of sending a message to the team and its veteran leadership, it still says that the Rangers are in a bit of disarray.

As one director of player personnel put it: “Something must be wrong in that room.”

• And the leaguewide message naming specific players? One former GM told The Athletic on Monday that he usually reserved that tactic until just before he was going to place someone on waivers. “You’re just making one last effort to get something back,” he said.

Neither Kreider nor Trouba have no-move clauses, so they can be placed on waivers. But would Drury try something that drastic in the middle of the season, with no obvious replacement for either player? That’s a stretch. This is another Cup-or-bust season for the Rangers, though. Perhaps nothing is off the table.

Drury still has to get Shesterkin’s contract done, as well as an extension for Cuylle, one of the team’s best forwards so far and coming off his entry-level deal at the end of the season. Kakko and Miller are RFAs. Lindgren and Quick are UFAs. The 2025 offseason was already going to bring change for the Rangers.
 
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Mike in Houston

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Apr 20, 2015
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Who has post plus?

I do.

It’s time to blow up this underachieving Rangers core

The recalls of Brett Berard and Matt Rempe may be an indication that GM Chris Drury and the hierarchy recognize that something is broken and needs repair. But the organization cannot stop at this.

For there is a perfect storm brewing that is threatening to sink the season. Half measures are not the answer.

The Rangers’ core has been largely in place since the first week of January of 2020 when Igor Shesterkin was promoted from the AHL. They had the goalie, they had added Artemi Panarin, Jacob Trouba, Adam Fox and second-overall pick Kaapo Kakko in the offseason, and they already had Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Filip Chytil and Ryan Lindgren in place.

The team responded to head coach David Quinn, thundering through the winter before COVID-19 shut down the league. But then the bubble tournament happened, the following season the team decided Quinn had become too oppressive, the Rangers stopped responding, and the coach, team president John Davidson and GM Jeff Gorton were all fired.

The following season, with K’Andre Miller, Alexis Lafreniere and Braden Schneider joining the group, the Blueshirts prospered under the light hand of incoming head coach Gerard Gallant. A year later, the team decided this laissez-faire approach was not really for them, and so Gallant was gone and replaced behind the bench by detail-oriented Peter Laviolette.

The 2023-24 Blueshirts demanded to be coached. They responded to Laviolette and his staff by finishing with the best record in the NHL. Now, a year later, and despite the optical illusion of a 12-6-1 record the team took into Monday night’s match at the Garden against the Blues, the Rangers don’t look like they are coached at all.

Same old. Same old.

It has never been quite good enough and now it is not even close following the twin embarrassments 48 hours apart in Alberta that marked the end of a 2-2 road trip. The Rangers are 10-0-1 against the bottom half of the league and 2-6 against the top 16.

There is something off. There is something wrong. It has felt that way since the final week of training camp. I have spent decades around hockey teams and one thing I can tell you with certainty is that when a group is as disconnected on the ice as the Rangers have been all year, there is an accompanying disconnect off the ice, as well.

The core has overstayed its welcome.

I’ve said this before and I will say this again. Management did not want to run it back. They had every intention of breaking it up while working within the limitations of contractual no-movement clauses. But they were internally blocked by doing so. You know why.

Oh, by the way, Jacob Trouba, who has the same 15-team no-trade list he had on July 1, has been invisible.

The captain’s hits per 60:00 are the lowest of his six-year ride in New York, at 4.43 per, which is a 47.1-percent decrease from last season’s 8.37. Perhaps this is related to the fractured ankle he sustained late last year — and that he played through in the playoffs — but it appears as if he has lost at least a step that he couldn’t afford to lose.

Trouba has been bad. Zibanejad has been bad. Kreider hasn’t been good at all. Maybe there is a lingering physical issue with Fox, but he has slipped off the list of perennial Norris contenders with a pedestrian start. Miller has not progressed.

Laviolette has a history, too, and though it may not be a puck-to-puck comparison but rather a puck-to-baseball comparison, the coach’s second full season with a club has never been as successful as Year One. There are qualifications to that, though, because it does not factor in partial initial seasons and personnel changes. But it is part of the permanent record.

Perhaps it would help if Laviolette gave the most ice time to the Rangers’ best players instead rather than the ones who are supposed to be the Rangers’ best players. Take Saturday night in Edmonton, for example.

The power play hadn’t scored in four games and had scored five PPGs in a month. The apparently inviolate PP1 unit of Kreider, Zibanejad, Panarin, Fox and Vincent Trocheck allowed a shorthanded goal at 19:51 of the first period to fall into a 2-0 hole.

And yet, when the second period commenced with another 57 seconds remaining on the man-advantage, there was PP1 out there again. I mean, who needs Alexis Lafreniere or Will Cuylle?
The Devils of Lou Lamoriello were a notorious group to coach. They fired coaches when they were in first place, twice in fact, with Robbie Ftorek and Claude Julien. But those Devils won multiple Stanley Cup championships. These Rangers are not that. They are not that, at all.

This core does not get to fire another coach. It has not earned that right.

The disconnect must be remedied within the roster. Zibanejad has a no-move clause and is not going anywhere. But Trouba can be traded and if he refuses to go, he can be suspended and removed from the cap. I sincerely doubt it would come to that. This is not a positive environment for him, either.

Moving Kreider — who missed Monday with an upper body, day-to-day issue — would send a shockwave through the organization. But the 33-year-old winger, who has two seasons remaining on his deal at $6.5 Million per with a 15-team no-trade list, might yield a bounty in return.

This has gotten old quickly. Full measures are required

Ozymandias.
 

DanielBrassard

It's all so tiresome
May 6, 2014
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How I would love to build a time machine, let Mika walk, and get Eichel the first time he was available.
I hate to rehash it once again, but yeah, this particular set of moves probably cost the Rangers a much more fruitful window than the one we ended up with.

As for the fact that Drury is trying to make a shake up trade, I am happy to hear it, even though I'm kinda surprised Kreider is at the top of the list. But this team has run it's course as I said the other night. Maybe if Kreider goes it would convince Mika to waive as well.
 

Oscar Lindberg

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Dec 14, 2015
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The core has overstayed its welcome.

I’ve said this before and I will say this again. Management did not want to run it back. They had every intention of breaking it up while working within the limitations of contractual no-movement clauses. But they were internally blocked by doing so. You know why.
This narrative drives me bonkers.And no doubt Drury thinks this which makes it even worse.

He had a chance to make other moves. No one had a gun to his head telling him to re-sign Lindgren after being ass for multiple seasons.

This whole victim complex of “oh well we wanted to make changes but Jacob messed up our plans”. Newsflash Chris, you get paid to pivot when the plans go south.

Not publicly pout that something didn’t go your way and that’s why this year won’t be as successful as last year.
 

DanielBrassard

It's all so tiresome
May 6, 2014
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Explain to me how just getting rid of Kreider does this.
He's been one of the worst 5v5 players in the league this year, he's 33 going on 34, his effort level is poor. I get it's a small sample of him being this bad, but he's looked terrible all season and he's not someone who can fall back on his elite skill. He might just be hitting the wall quicker than expected.
 
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Kords

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Jun 19, 2019
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Any Post Sports Plus payers have a breakdown of Larry's piece? Sounds like it might be juicy.
 

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