Speculation: Roster Building Thread: Part XXI (Will these playoffs ever F'ing end?)

[RangerBoy]

I'm not one to be putting Panarins name out there because we need him but I could get on board moving him if we were signing Marner. Also, if Marner leaves Toronto they might be desperate for a Panarin type player or even Kreider, don't know what they'd have that I'd want, Knies would most definitely be a non starter for them, as would Matthews and Nylander. Maybe Morgan Rielly? Picks? Don't think they have much in their system. Getting a younger Panarin type and acquiring assets would help us a lot, plus it would help our left and right winger issues.

Marner? Stop building the same team.

 

[RangerBoy]

I'm so sick of seeing Zegras pop up here. I hope he gets traded somewhere else and we never have to hear about him ever ever again

Zegras is from Bedford, NY and grew up rooting for the Rangers. That's why some Rangers fan love. It's the Adam Fox syndrome. Kevin Shattenkirk too.

Zegras scores those fancy goals. He is a better center than winger and Greg Cronin I believe played Zegras on the wing. I remember Montreal nearly acquired Zegras last summer for Logan Mailloux and the 21st pick in the 2024 draft. Then the Ducks selected Sennecke 3rd overall which saw Demidov drop to the Habs at #5. The Habs thought Demidov would be gone before #5 and they would select Sennecke who is 6-4 and still growing into his body. Montreal didn't want to add another finesse offensive guy after selecting Demidov. The Habs need to add more size to their forward group. Gorton and Hughes passed on Zegras. Verbeek would trade Zegras. No thanks unless the Rangers ship him off in another deal. Zegras always seems to be hurt.

 

[Leonardo87]

Damn, thought we could avoid “Trade Fox” stuff till at least the 1k post mark.

 

[GAGLine]

Gorton and Hughes passed on Zegras. Verbeek would trade Zegras. No thanks unless the Rangers ship him off in another deal. Zegras always seems to be hurt.

Which is telling, because Zegras was reportedly high on Gorton's draft list until we won the lottery.

Enough with the finesse guys. Give me the bulls in a china shop, the guys who win battles and thrive in the dirty areas of the ice.

I feel like Laf can be that, but he needs to play with other players like that. Put him with Cuylle and Miller.

We need to trade Panarin. To me, he is the first one that has to go in order to change the culture. And we'll get a significant return for him. I'd move Mika before Kreider, but I don't know if it would be possible. Ideally, they'd both go and bring back younger players.

I'm more in favor of getting Fox help than I am trading him, but I could see moving him if we were going to completely blow it up. In any deal for any of these players, it's going to depend on the return. I don't want to go all futures. We need to get some young roster players.

 

[RangerBoy]

EF. Chris Drury has a lot of balls in the air.

 

[Machinehead]

I still have some offseason threads planned. Preliminaries coming soon.

 

[LokiDog]

EF. Chris Drury has a lot of balls in the air.

So that’s where they went…

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Zac Jones got engaged.

In case anyone likes to know that information

 

[Kendo]

My feeling on the playoffs thing is use whoever you want but you still need to be under the cap

"You must ice a cap-compliant team each game." No pro-rata, just add up the cap hits of your 20 listed players that day. It could be so simple.

 

[NYRfan85]

Haven't been on the boards much the last few weeks, so forgive me if this has already been answered somewhere, but what's the status for our first round pick? Did we keep this year's, and Pittsburgh get next year's? Or vice versa? Or TBD?

 

[Machinehead]

Marner is a good player but if they did that, it does reek a little bit of "younger Panarin."

The problem isn't that the team aged out. They were just never good enough. It would really feel like misdiagnosing the problem.

 

[TGWL]

Rangers should be the last team giving up assets. Their depth is literally one goalie, 3000 wingers who all do the same thing, a few D prospects with zero offense, and a very talented but skinny kid (Perrault).

We have a lot of assets. The problem is those assets aren't very good and don't scream bright NHL career. You said it in this post "3000 wingers who all do the same thing" So why wouldn't we try to bring in somebody who does something different?

I'll take a prospect who worked with a skating coach and actually improved his burst skating. I'll take a prospect who took it serious when needing to gain some weight/muscle to prepare for the NHL. Maybe he doesn't find success in the NHL, but I look at our prospect pool and I'm not seeing a bunch of players who are going to break through. I'm certainly not worrying about attaching a 2nd round pick to most of those players, when that 2nd round pick is just going to end up more of the same or used for deadline, meh deals.

 

[GoAwayPanarin]

Marner is a good player but if they did that, it does reek a little bit of "younger Panarin."

The problem isn't that the team aged out. They were just never good enough. It would really feel like misdiagnosing the problem.

How does this team do in their 2 deeper runs if Panarin is a 1.1 ppg player in the playoffs instead of the .76 guy he's been? Almost every single loss they've had in their 2 ECF's were 1 goal games and a goal/contributing to a goal here and there would have certainly made a difference. They had bigger holes (especially last year) but they would have been able to get by with them to at least a finals appearance if they got more out of #10 and maybe even a cup despite that (truth is, every winner has had a glaring issue or 3.)

Marner is a better player than Panarin but it is more of the same. Thats a player who I'm sure can put up numbers when it matters in the right situation but that situation isn't here where at that price point, you're expecting someone who can drive the bus instead of playing navigator.

I do think that the FO needs to be careful though. I'm on board with shipping Panarin out, but you can't become allergic to skill players and just try to load up with size and grit and grrrrr. Unless those guys can do some/most of the stuff a Panarin/skill player of your choice can do, it's not going to end well (see: Minnesota Wild, and thats with a top 5-7 player in the league who has produced in the playoffs!)

 

[Machinehead]

How does this team do in their 2 deeper runs if Panarin is a 1.1 ppg player in the playoffs instead of the .76 guy he's been? Almost every single loss they've had in their 2 ECF's were 1 goal games and a goal/contributing to a goal here and there would have certainly made a difference. They had bigger holes (especially last year) but they would have been able to get by with them to at least a finals appearance if they got more out of #10 and maybe even a cup despite that (truth is, every winner has had a glaring issue or 3.)

Marner is a better player than Panarin but it is more of the same. Thats a player who I'm sure can put up numbers when it matters in the right situation but that situation isn't here where at that price point, you're expecting someone who can drive the bus instead of playing navigator.

I do think that the FO needs to be careful though. I'm on board with shipping Panarin out, but you can't become allergic to skill players and just try to load up with size and grit and grrrrr. Unless those guys can do some/most of the stuff a Panarin/skill player of your choice can do, it's not going to end well (see: Minnesota Wild, and thats with a top 5-7 player in the league who has produced in the playoffs!)

I'm not saying this to absolve Panarin, but I don't think there's many players in the league (sans McDavid and MacKinnon who tip the ice by themselves) that get those extra goals, because the team never has the puck.

And even if it could work, I don't wanna rebuild a PP merchant team with a slightly better chance at succeeding on the powerplay (which is where Panarin did have the puck and was more guilty than anywhere else) because 1) why would you do that? Again, more of the same. And 2) Every powerplay goes 1 for a quadrillion at some point, that's why such emphasis is placed on 5v5.

I totally agree with you that while we need to change the look of the team, particularly on here, people overcorrect to the point of hating skill. We don't need less skill. I think we need more skill at a lot of spots in the lineup. We need to be better at 5v5. Skill makes you better at 5v5.

I'll put it this way: if you re-made the team and happened to also add Marner, that's not something I would dismiss out of hand. Just signing Marner smells of just plugging him in and keeping the team fundamentally the same.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Haven't been on the boards much the last few weeks, so forgive me if this has already been answered somewhere, but what's the status for our first round pick? Did we keep this year's, and Pittsburgh get next year's? Or vice versa? Or TBD?

TBD 48hrs before the draft.

 

[Machinehead]

Rangers icon

 

[RangerBoy]

EF mentioned Nic Hague is being mentioned in trade talks. His contract expires this summer. One year away from group 3. Hague is a nasty piece of work. Not afraid to drop the gloves. He would be ideal for the Rangers. 6-6 240 pounds. I remember reading after Vegas was knocked out by Edmonton that the Golden Knights needed a scoring winger. Chris Kreider?

 

[haohmaru]

Rangers icon

Wow, he's still young-ish @ 34. Don't know the injury history though.

Another in the long list of players that excelled at their role that the Rangers should've figured out how to keep (Fast, Hagelin, Buchnevich, Stralman, McD, etc...) as part of a long term solution.

 

[Machinehead]

Wow, he's still young-ish @ 34. Don't know the injury history though.

Another in the long list of players that excelled at their role that the Rangers should've figured out how to keep (Fast, Hagelin, Buchnevich, Stralman, McD, etc...) as part of a long term solution.

He had a serious neck thing

 

[NYRnine94]

I'm not saying this to absolve Panarin, but I don't think there's many players in the league (sans McDavid and MacKinnon who tip the ice by themselves) that get those extra goals, because the team never has the puck.

And even if it could work, I don't wanna rebuild a PP merchant team with a slightly better chance at succeeding on the powerplay (which is where Panarin did have the puck and was more guilty than anywhere else) because 1) why would you do that? Again, more of the same. And 2) Every powerplay goes 1 for a quadrillion at some point, that's why such emphasis is placed on 5v5.

I totally agree with you that while we need to change the look of the team, particularly on here, people overcorrect to the point of hating skill. We don't need less skill. I think we need more skill at a lot of spots in the lineup. We need to be better at 5v5. Skill makes you better at 5v5.

I'll put it this way: if you re-made the team and happened to also add Marner, that's not something I would dismiss out of hand. Just signing Marner smells of just plugging him in and keeping the team fundamentally the same.

I feel like our 5v5 play is so important and management doesn't realize it. Once the PP looked like shit, the team fell apart. I hope Sullivan fixes the 5v5 on this team

 

[GoAwayPanarin]

I'm not saying this to absolve Panarin, but I don't think there's many players in the league (sans McDavid and MacKinnon who tip the ice by themselves) that get those extra goals, because the team never has the puck.

And even if it could work, I don't wanna rebuild a PP merchant team with a slightly better chance at succeeding on the powerplay (which is where Panarin did have the puck and was more guilty than anywhere else) because 1) why would you do that? Again, more of the same. And 2) Every powerplay goes 1 for a quadrillion at some point, that's why such emphasis is placed on 5v5.

I totally agree with you that while we need to change the look of the team, particularly on here, people overcorrect to the point of hating skill. We don't need less skill. I think we need more skill at a lot of spots in the lineup. We need to be better at 5v5. Skill makes you better at 5v5.

I'll put it this way: if you re-made the team and happened to also add Marner, that's not something I would dismiss out of hand. Just signing Marner smells of just plugging him in and keeping the team fundamentally the same.

At 11.6 the expectation should be that the team does that when he is out there. No one will argue what he's done in the regular season but he hasn't come close to leading the team in playoff scoring on any of their runs. Even last year (where he finished 3rd) he was outplayed by both of his line mates (the previous excuse for him was that his line mates weren't good enough, that wasn't a thing in 2024.) The issue isn't that he hasn't been MacK or McDavid, it's that he hasn't even been as good as guys who are a tier (and sometimes 2) below that. Had he given them that then we're probably having a different conversation.

I don't dislike Marner, but that that price point you better be f***ing sure that the guy is going to be able to drive the bus in the playoffs. We've already been burned by that and Marner has shown no indication of being able to do it in Toronto where he has had support. The hate he gets is overblown because it's Toronto, but it's also clear that he can't be "the guy."

 

[Fitzy]

Marner is a good player but if they did that, it does reek a little bit of "younger Panarin."

The problem isn't that the team aged out. They were just never good enough. It would really feel like misdiagnosing the problem.

It's both, because if the only way to make the team better is to also have existing players return to their previous form, that becomes less and less likely as guys get into ther mid 30s

 

[bleedblue94]

EF mentioned Nic Hague is being mentioned in trade talks. His contract expires this summer. One year away from group 3. Hague is a nasty piece of work. Not afraid to drop the gloves. He would be ideal for the Rangers. 6-6 240 pounds. I remember reading after Vegas was knocked out by Edmonton that the Golden Knights needed a scoring winger. Chris Kreider?

I brought this up two weeks ago.

Hague has legs...

 

[Machinehead]

Hague can't defend at all.

 

[HonestGabe]

Hague can't defend at all.

He'll fit right in then