Ive been making these arguments for years, and they were usually met with scorn.
The first mistake was trading for Jagr and surrounding him with his posse. That was a total waste. Hardly anyone from those teams is still here. Those were stopgap teams, except the stop gaps are supposed to hold you over in years where you get high picks. We didn't do that.
The second mistake was trying to surround those aging players with terrible free agent signings instead of realizing that those teams were miserably flawed and needed to be scrapped.
Mistake three was signing Gaborik instead of dismantling and getting high picks, or at least being patient and getting a legit dynamic multi talent like Kovalchuk.
Chance after chance to rebuild and get a high draft pick to develop a great top line forward was passed over.
You don't go anywhere in this league without some homegrown franchise forwards anchoring your top line (even te year the Bruins won the Cup, Crosby was out). Not only did the Rangers refuse to go through a natural rebuild, but the one chance they had where a top line prospect fell into their laps, they drafted a role player defenseman.
This team does everything backwards, and what you get in they case is what we have now: not bad, but certainly not good enough.