You yourself make this seem all so simple. Just cut Mika's ice time and he'll be begging to leave. You're all but certain. You're all but certain also then that freed from Mika Kreider's game will rejuvenate. You've never noticed it seems the almost unnatural affection between Chris and Mika. It's probably platonic but let's call it man love because it pretty much is. That separating these two will be tantamount to separating siamese twins. Fact is if you really want so badly to get rid of Mika moving Kreider is probably the thing you could do to get Mika to want out. Thing also is if Mika is traded Kreider might want out then right off. You've got this Raty f***ing guy walking into our lineup as our new 2C....and he's no great shakes. We'd probably get better results out of Brodzinski.
Applying our own rationale to other people and particularly other people we really don't know is almost always foolish. Cutting Mika's ice time won't necessarily make him want to go somewhere else or make a trade easier to happen. Vancouver having other Swedish players doesn't mean he's going to want to play there either. He's acclimated to North America rather well.....he doesn't necessarily need other Swedes around him. The one thing I'd almost agree on is that right now if he's not playing to a level of what a 2C is having him in the lineup as a 2C isn't workable. Losing him if he can't handle that role anymore is addition by subtraction whether we have an in house replacement for him or not but Aatu Raty is not it. Try harder.
EB, I expect this borderline hostile nonsense from some, but I am surprised to see it from you and
@smoneil I can only imagine it is the frustration w/the status quo bubbling over.
"You yourself make this seem all so simple. Just cut Mika's ice time and he'll be begging to leave. You're all but certain. You're all but certain also then that freed from Mika Kreider's game will rejuvenate."
Certainty borders on absolute, and only God is truly absolute.
I am more like very optimistic bordering on highly confident.
In any event, the pt is moot b'c this is the only card we have to play.
"You've never noticed it seems the almost unnatural affection between Chris and Mika. It's probably platonic but let's call it man love because it pretty much is. That separating these two will be tantamount to separating siamese twins."
It is nice that there may be some genuine affection in any comradery any teammate feels for another. That said, no player is above the club, and no player's bromance should carry weight over and above the interests of the team.
Mika has turned into a head case.
Not sure 111% vegan, in the short term, is not impacting him negatively, maybe being slightly older, he is just that tiny tad less able to be physically dominant when needed.
Whatev the reason, his time here has run its course and he has got to go.
"Fact is if you really want so badly to get rid of Mika moving Kreider is probably the thing you could do to get Mika to want out."
Very possibly true, but we do not have to go there yet.
We should be able to move Mika to VAN for full retain and min assets coming back.
And of extreme importance, I consider Mika's conduct to be selfish, and I don't want it rewarded.
Mika will bend buckle and break and not dictate to us who stays and goes. He will capitulate on this to me and every other Ranger fan, not the other way around.
"Thing also is if Mika is traded Kreider might want out then right off."
Either your postulate is true or it is not.
If it is not, it is not even a whoop, and if it is, IMO he will get over it.
Kreider is a professional.
I'll take my chances
He has earned no bum's rush exit, unlike Mika.
I will reassess after the deadwood is gone.
"You've got this Raty f***ing guy walking into our lineup as our new 2C....and he's no great shakes. We'd probably get better results out of Brodzinski."
I said 3C w/2C potential, our short term look, assuming no other adds*, is Chytil + Trocheck, reinforced by Brodz. There's nothing wrong with that.
* I and others have advocated selling high on Fox before protection kicks in.
Fox + lesser future pick
for
Kleven, Pinto, Grieg + greater future pick
that ^ would help w/top 6 pivot
but again, peeps gotta realize there is no magic 1 button solution to all our probs, life is complicated, lots of probs require multiple solutions
Focus on the many, the totality
make sure you can see the whole forest from the trees
Applying our own rationale to other people and particularly other people we really don't know is almost always foolish. Cutting Mika's ice time won't necessarily make him want to go somewhere else or make a trade easier to happen. Vancouver having other Swedish players doesn't mean he's going to want to play there either. He's acclimated to North America rather well.....he doesn't necessarily need other Swedes around him. The one thing I'd almost agree on is that right now if he's not playing to a level of what a 2C is having him in the lineup as a 2C isn't workable. Losing him if he can't handle that role anymore is addition by subtraction whether we have an in house replacement for him or not but Aatu Raty is not it. Try harder.
The hatred of drury in that locker room goes back wayyyyy before barclay goodrow.
Lindgren, fox and vesey in particular really did not like how things went down with TDA. Yes, I know vesey wasnt on the team at the time but all those guys are close. And they viewed it as drury maliciously trying to torpedo tda’s career with zero remorse when he just as easily couldve traded him.
Trocheck is also one of tonys best friends and while yes, he signed here after what happened with tony, he naturally came in skeptical of trusting drury as a person.
The thing is, guys like trouba and kreider didnt mind as much as they werent as close with tony. Now, drurys gotten that crew to hate him too so he really has very few allies left. It’s as toxic and it can get.
Either a good chunk of the vets are moved out or drury goes. This is nuclear
The vets go NOW, asap
Drury can go later, but first these clowns who feel a sense of entitlement and forget that they are working for me, you, and the rest of the fans, they go first.
And the worst offenders among them, they can kiss my ass
Does he know about the angle of the dangle?
you mean relative to the mass of the ass?
I've literally never said that. If we could dump Zib and repurpose his salary on a new center, I'd do it in a heartbeat. My point, from the get go, isn't that he's worth keeping, but that he's impossible to get rid of due to a variety of factors (NMC, 5 more years term, high cap hit, dwindling production).
No amount of illegal "nudge nudge, wink wink" perma-benchings or dreams that a team that never retains will wake up and decide to retain more than 21 million dollars (for the joy of seeing Brodzinski in the top 6 when Chytil inevitably gets hurt again) will change the fact that for at least the next couple of years, we're stuck with Zibanejad. Neither of us like that fact, but only one of us is a realist about what can be done about that fact. ...
O don't know why 2 of our more venerable posters, and you a prof on top of that, insist on having a closed mind as to what I am saying.
Zib has to go, period.
It is either legally doable or not. $$$$ is a separate argument, put on a shelf for the moment.
Zib can be embarrassed, and the eye test of his [lack of] production fully justifies an ongoing benching.
At some pt Zib will say this is not a good look for my career, it is an ugly blot that can't be allowed to grow, and he will be open to a relocation if it is a place to which he is comfy.
That is our only play and our only hope.
Keeping an uproductive, overrated zib, who does not shoot sufficiently and his ballyhooed 1-timer is so predictable as to be routinely blocked, IS NOT AN OPTION.
As to $$$$$$$$$ I have addressed this.
It was a costly mistake.
We will be fortunate to get away w/cutting our losses in half.
It will be a bigger waste of money to keep this useless dolt on payroll doing nothing than to move him now.
You talk about me being unrealistic.
The above IS reality.
As to corporate not dropping that much retained salary, failure to do so has consequences.
Mgmt was stupid enough not to listen to me and engage in all manner of rentals which other than Vatrano for a 4th were idiocy, in pursuit of instant gratification. You think that posture is going to suddenly tell the fan base, whether it be in implicit or explicit terms, that we now have to be patient and wait out Mika's contract?
Think about it.
And then think some more.
As to Raty, I said he was 3C w/2C upside.
Again, Rs are going to have to fuggin learn to listen to me and fuggin accept that there is an unavoidable need to develop young talent, which by nature inherently includes growing pains.
We don't know how quickly Raty or anyone else will develop, we can only give it our best good faith shot, which is better than relying on the overrated vets for too long.
Desire to lose all of Zib and move all his cap is unrealistic. A trade partner MIGHT consider him at half, b'c if Mika is too far gone, he can still be sold w/a second full retention to a team, presum a basement one, that needs to hit the cap floor. Howev, they will want to extract that potential future cost from us first, upfront, and bake that into the equation.
Let Zib go. And accept the high price as the cost of doing biz
Time for Rangers to move on from Kaapo Kakko — and the trade that makes most sense
Daily double alert regarding the Rangers who, after losing to the then-32nd and last-overall Blackhawks at the Garden on Dec. 9, have the opportunity to lose to the current-32nd and last-overall Predators in Nashville on Tuesday.
1. Kaapo Kakko has not been close to being a singular problem through the Blueshirts’ slide, but head coach Peter Laviolette thought that scratching the Finn in St. Louis on Sunday would be a solution.
It is time to move on. It is not going to pop here. And even when it kind of does, even when there is a glimmer, it is never quite sustainable, the puck still doesn’t go in, it is always a disappointment.
And I’m sure for Kakko, too, whose ceiling gets lower by the week.
2. The hierarchy that includes president-general manager Chris Drury and chairman Jim Dolan are hurtling toward a crossroads off this 3-10 nosedive that commenced two games ahead of the memo. The organization will have to decide whether to attempt to bolster this roster for a playoff run or whether to go into a 2018-19 retool.
Here’s the thing I can confidently tell you: The Rangers will not sacrifice their most promising future assets — the likes of Will Cuylle, Gabe Perreault, Brennan Othmann, E.J. Emery — in order to do patchwork so that this team might squeeze out a round or two in the tournament.
Trading a first-rounder for the opportunity to rent Columbus defenseman Ivan Provorov would represent lunacy.
The idea is not to consume two or three or four home playoff dates. It was not in 2018, when the organization was in range of making the playoffs for the eighth straight year but chose to go the route that took them to the conference finals twice within six years of the Letter, and it is not now.
3. Kakko is not a sell-high guy. I doubt that his inclusion will prove a tipping point in any major package on which the Blueshirts might be working. I’m not sure what fair value is for the 23-year-old, third-line winger (4-10-14 in 29 games averaging 13:23 of ice time per), but there is no point in being picky, either.
The Sabres have to be looking to make a move. They are one of the few teams currently in a worse place than the Rangers. Of course, I would want Dylan Cozens, and of course I would want Alec Tuch. Kakko does not trigger that type of conversation, unless as a throw-in.
I’d offer Kakko for Jordan Greenway, the 6-foot-6, 230-pound winger who put K’Andre Miller on IR with a blow in the Rangers’ 3-2 victory in Buffalo last Thursday.
Greenway brings size; he brings attitude; he goes to the net. His 11.88 hits per 60:00 at five-on-five would rank third on the Rangers behind Cuylle (18.46) and Adam Edstrom (11.92). The Canton, N.Y., native who a week ago returned from a three-week absence (mid-body), has three goals and four assists in 20 games, 1-3-4 over the last 15.
I know, but that’s why he might be attainable in exchange for Kakko. You think you’re getting Cole Caufield in return?
Greenway, who turns 28 on Feb. 16, can become an unrestricted free agent on July 1 coming off a deal under which he carries a $3 million cap hit. Not ideal, but it’s not ideal either that Kakko is coming up on his final year of restricted free agency off his one-year, $2.4M deal. Of course, it is doubtful that No. 24 will get there as a Ranger.
4. Laviolette appropriately cut Mika Zibanejad’s ice time in the third period in St. Louis on Monday while the Rangers were chasing a 3-0 deficit that they narrowed to 3-2. No. 93 received only three shifts worth 2:15 for the first 14:37.
But then he got another one at 14:27. And then, for whatever reason, Laviolette simply could not contain himself and sent Zibanejad on for the final 2:33 after the Blueshirts had pulled Jonathan Quick for the extra attacker.
Meanwhile, Cuylle — who had scored the club’s second goal by going to the net and burying an Alexis Lafreniere feed — got only two shifts after bringing the team within 3-2 at 11:37 and did not get on the ice for the final 3:55.
What are we doing here?
5. The collapse of the Zibanejad-Chris Kreider partnership has been devastating. It is as if these two symbiotic friends and forwards have aged two decades in two months. The last three years, Nos. 93 and 20 had a 58.74 goals-for ratio. This year, it is 42.11.
Kreider, who worked hard on a rejiggered bottom-six line with Sam Carrick and Edstrom in St. Louis, has one goal in his past 10 games. Yet he, like Zibanejad, was on for the final 2:33 when Berard, who had scored the first goal, was not on, either.
There comes a time when the back of the baseball card no longer applies.
6. According to MoneyPuck, there are 62 defense pairs that have played at least 200 minutes at five-on-five.
The top-ranked pair per expected goal share?
K’Andre Miller-Adam Fox with a 65.9xGF.
The 62nd-ranked pair?
That would be Ryan Lindgren-Adam Fox at 40.1.
So, of course, Laviolette had broken up the Miller-Fox tandem (for the second time) eight games prior to No. 79 going down in Buffalo … so he could go back to Lindgren-Fox.
What are we doing here?
Oh, I said that before.
STOP
Giving away KK is NOT the answer
He has proven himself effective w/2 versions of the kid line
just keep him w/Cuylle + Chytil/Brodz and get out of the way
