None of that makes sense. How does Brendl, Lundmark, Jessiman, Korpikoski have anything to do with Lafreniere/Kakko/Kravtsov/Andersson? It's not the same people in charge. It's different coaches. Different front office. What do you think Jim Dolan is out on the ice telling them all how to play?
Actually yes. It's an ownership group known for micromanagement and not tolerating dissent that insists on being "competitive" and "making a big splash" every season to drive ticket sales.
If you have the patience to read all this, here's a more in depth look at how I see this whole period:
Look at what they did in 98-04. They had a deep run in '97 with a group that was on its last legs, and was known for age, and got injured in the playoffs and lost to the Flyers who beat them up. So they trade Luc Robitaille who had multiple good seasons left in him for the pale shadow of Kevin Stevens, try to offer sheet Joe Sakic and have no backup plan at all while allowing Messier to walk to Vancouver, and lose all the secondary scoring they traded for throughout the year (Russ Courtnall, Esa Tikkanen) because they lacked it the entire year before, but somehow the priority was third line grit in the form of Mike Keane and Brian Skrudland. Then, having lost Messier, they panic and trade for a not-medically-cleared-to-play Pat LaFontaine, and find a doctor who medically clears him to play. Oh, and they add Tim Sweeney. Anything to avoid throwing Dube or Goneau into the lineup for a full season because that would look too much like a "rebuild" and fans don't want to pay huge sums of money for that.
Meanwhile, they drafted Stefan Cherneski in '97. 0 NHL games.
Drafted Malhotra in '98, and fielded probably the worst team I've ever seen them have in 98-99. Malhotra played exclusively 4th line though! They also tried to trade for/sign Bure multiple times though during this period. Signed Theo Fleury and Valeri Kamensky too! Who's the one guy they move after 98-99 though? Why, Marc Savard of course.
Somehow a bunch of their lower round picks worked out in 00-01, and some of the overpriced veterans hit one last time (and Messier came back and had a good year), but they could not defend worth a damn. Guys like Mike York, Jan Hlavac, and Kim Johnsson proved they could be support pieces. But you're not going to be able to defend when you are literally running out Dale Purinton, Rich Pilon, Brad Brown, and Sylvain Lefebvre for more than half of your games. End result? Richter had his worst NHL season to date and blew out his knee, then Theo Fleury relapsed, and the team collapsed from a bubble team down the stretch to miss the playoffs badly. Clearly, Richter was stealing games (despite poor stats) because once he got hurt it became obvious how bad the defense was as Kirk McLean and Guy Hebert basically let in 4 goals or more every game. But ironically, the Fleury relapse, etc. forced the team to play Malhotra with Messier, and the kid puts up 7 points in 12 games on Messier's wing and generally shows more promise than the rotting corpse of Valeri Kamensky. So with Brendl and Lundmark waiting in the wings, what does the team do?
Why, trades for Eric Lindros of course. And then for Pavel Bure too! But they sign promising hyped prospect Barrett Heisten who...doesn't produce a single NHL point. Meanwhile, mid 01-02, they acquire Martin Rucinsky, the first time. The price? Manny Malhotra. Rucinsky walks in free agency, and the other player brought over in the deal, Roman Lyashenko, sadly commits suicide. So the Rangers traded Manny Malhotra for nothing less than a season after he showed promise on Messier's wing.
By '03 the injury histories of both of those guys had caught up with them, and the '03 team simply couldn't score. Lundmark debutes to 12 minutes of mostly even strength time a night and there is zero depth scoring, but somehow the offseason priority was signing Darius Kasparaitis to a giant deal. When the team proves over 60 games that it can't score, the solution is to bring Alexei Kovalev back, and then immediately resort to labeling him a bust again as his PPG basically cuts in half after the trade, and he muddles through a mediocre 03-04 before being traded for "exciting prospect" Jozef Balej who scores a whopping 1 NHL goal in his entire career, while Kovalev produces 3 more 60 point seasons.
But look guys, we signed Bobby Holik away from the Devils (HAHAHA that will teach THEM!), traded for Jagr, and brought back Jan Hlavac hoping to rekindle the magic he created with his two Czechmates who were...in Edmonton (Dvorak), or about to be (Nedved). And we also sent Brian Leetch to Toronto for a whole lot of nothing (exciting Maxim Kondratiev also scored exactly 1 NHL goal! - meanwhile exciting Jarkko Immonen exceed all expectations and scored THREE!)
And then a funny thing happened during the lockout. The Rangers were predicted to completely totally suck coming out of it. They didn't have a goalie - Kevin Weekes was going to be the starter - and Jagr was in exactly the situation he found himself in Washington, forced to throw an entire team on his back. It was going to be a "rebuilding" year. So the team went out and signed a few guys to make Jagr comfortable (guys named Nylander, Straka, and Rucinsky, who were somehow better than everyone else they'd signed recently), and rookie Henrik Lundqvist stole the show in nets. Ironically, the one thing the team lacked all season was offense from the blueline (gee, wonder who might have helped with that) which led to them trading for the defensively irresponsible Sandis Ozolinsh. Down the stretch, they acquired secondary scoring that helped them tremendously (guys like Petr Sykora), as they clearly went all in on a Cup run in their first rebuild year, only to lose when Jagr got hurt and Lundqvist played like a rookie in the first round. Meanwhile, in the offseason, responible defensive faceoff specialist Steve Rucchin was gone, Sykora was gone, Rucinsky (who produced better than expected in 3 stints with the team) was gone again...and in their place was a 38-year old Brendan Shanahan, Matt Cullen, and at the trade deadline, Sean Avery was added and provided enough of a spark for the Rangers to win their first playoff series in 10 years.
That secondary scoring was a problem all year clearly merited addressing, so the solution was to overpay for mediocre players in the offseason because they were the best available. Sign 30 goal scorer Scott Gomez to replace Michael Nylander! Because a guy that never scored 20 and was a known playmaker with speed with a pea shooter of a shot was clearly worth that salary! Never mind he scored 13-47-60 last year! Look at 05-06! (and ignore the fact the entire league went crazy with scoring that year due to increased powerplay scoring and the league adjusting to the rule changes including the end of 2-line pass offsides). That'll stick it to those darn Devils again (HAHA!). Oh, and let's also sign Chris Drury, because he killed us 2 years ago in the playoffs. So, to recap, lose Nylander, Shanahan now turns 39, add Gomez and Drury. Definition of spinning our wheels and getting more expensive. Meanwhile, Ryan Hollweg is still in the lineup for 70 games cuz grit, or something.
After another disappointing season made tolerable by Jagr rediscovering his scoring touch in the playoffs, the team decides to play hardball with Jagr who they can no longer afford because of the ridiculous Drury and Gomez contracts. So off he goes to Russia, and the offense goes into a long slow decline for much of the next decade that is only made tolerable by Henrik Lundqvist entering into the best stretch of his career which is utterly wasted.
08-09 - no money for Jagr, but money for Wade Redden! The impact of playing with future Hall of Famer Zdeno Chara was never considered - a mistake both the Senators and Rangers made when deciding who to prioritize. After Chara left for Boston, Redden had 2 subpar seasons in Ottawa. But the Rangers paid him like he was still paying with Chara (and walked away from Jagr in the process). Their leading scorer in 08-09 was Nikolai Zherdev, who despite being still a "prospect" saw almost 4 minutes per game less ice time than both Gomez and Drury. But they went out and signed the ghost of Markus Naslund because he used to score 40 goals I think. Rookie Lauri Korpikoski sees <11 minutes of ice time a night in his rookie season. Brandon Dubinsky and Ryan Callahan prove themselves gritty and defensively responsible, so they see more ice time, partly out of necessity. Then 27-year old Aaron Voros inexplicably spends part of the beginning of the season on the top line because, he's 6'4" and might turn into a power forward - thus he deserves that opportunity - but Manny Malhotra didn't because he didn't prove himself defensively responsible as an 18-20 year old on a team that was giving ~20 minutes a night to Peter Popovic ('99), the coffin that housed what was once Kevin Hatcher ('00) and Stephane Quintal, and Sylvain Lefebvre.
Fresh off their worst offensive season in a long time, the team of course decides to sign Marian Gaborik who immediately makes a big splash and posts a career year. In a show of their priorities, they also sign an amateur MMA fighter who took a skating lesson at Chelsea Piers once who kind of looks like Donald Brashear, and even has the same last name. Meanwhile, prospect Artem Anisimov gets buried on the depth chart behind the shell of Drury, but the team overall does worse and misses the playoffs entirely on the last day of the season. And the team responds to this suckfailure of a season by drafting Dylan McIlrath in the first round and signing Derek Boogaard cuz TUFFNESS, and because that Brashear guy didn't work out too good.
Naturally the big offseason acquisition is Ruslan Fedotenko, because what this team needs is the veteran experience of a guy who scored 2 goals in Game 7 to teach them how to win Cups when they can't even make the playoffs. Gaborik gets hurt, and the team underperforms in '11, but still makes the playoffs. The kids who are in the lineup play solidly Rangers (TM) hockey and contribute at both ends of the ice, but approach nothing resembling a point per game. We have become the mid 1990s Buffalo Sabres teams, backstopped by Lundqvist, and not by Hasek.
So let's sign Brad Richards!
In 2011-12 literally everything goes right. The team basically wins every 1 goal game ever, finishes the regular season in first and draws literally the easiest Stanley Cups Playoff seeding in NHL history. As the #1 east seed, they face #8 east, #7 east, #6 east (Devils), and had they won, would have faced the #8 west in the Finals. They inexplicably go 7 games against everyone and are out of gas in the semis and lose to the Devils. Yet again, there's no scoring. But Gaborik had a bad playoffs (with an injured shoulder), so it's his fault they lost. Kreider provides speed and physicality, and looks like a legit prospect, though.
Obviously we need to better so let's sign Rick Nash!
Holy crap - for the first time in ages, we have a legit first line! Nash-Richards-Gaborik. Legit excitement about a team for the first time in a while. Those guys dominate the first few games of the year, but the team has ZERO secondary scoring. So naturally, split up the top line. When Gaborik goes into a slump, trade him, he's Euro and soft. Gets us Brassard (serviceable, but redundant when we already have Stepan), Derek Dorsett (WHY?), and John Moore (another vanilla "puck moving defenseman" because apparently we missed Wade Redden). Meanwhile, Mats Zuccarello is in his third season with the team and still somehow isn't an NHL regular. Kreider can't even stay in the lineup at all, and frequently ends up scratched and in the doghouse.
By 2013-14, Richards and Nash are regressing, and we've become the Buffalo Sabres again. But a trade has saved the day again! MSL is a Ranger! We have a top line again, guys! Zuccarello slots into the second line where he fits nicely at this point in his career, and the team enters the playoffs with a balanced attack (not a strong one, but balanced) and makes a run all the way to the finals where Gaborik gets the last laugh and the team has run out of gas again after playing 20 out of a possible 21 games in the first 3 rounds. The Finals is ridiculously close overall despite the final series score as the games are close and a series of calls go against the Rangers which certainly doesn't help. But hey! First Finals appearance in 20 years. Now imagine what we can do if Nash and Richards produce like they're supposed to!
The 2015 team was one of the strongest the Rangers fielded during this time. A career year from Nash, but regression from MSL
and Richards, however. With Zuccarello, Hayes, JT Miller, and Kreider, there are young players to be excited about, but the focus seems to be on them playing "Rangers hockey (TM)" at this point in their careers. After a 2014 playoff where there was no offense from the blueline (other than McDonagh), the team again tries to buy their way out of a problem as a faint whisper of what used to be Dan Boyle (offseason) and Keith Yandle (midseason) are brought in. Yandle, of course, is misued in the playoffs (<20 min ATOI) and underperforms. Boyle does the Redden thing all year. Rookie Anthony Duclair showed flashes of brilliance but couldn't stay in the lineup and ends up back in Juniors, then becomes the price of Yandle. Meanwhile, Matt Hunwick sees powerplay time and Tanner Glass plays in 66 games. The 2015 team STILL almost makes the Finals in spite of itself with MSL doing very little in the playoffs and Nash not adding much either, but in the end, the triplets run all over Staal/Girardi who never get benched because they play Rangers hockey (TM). And Anton Stralman, who was the odd man out to support the Boyle signing, has a career year...FOR TAMPA in exactly the role he would have had here had he been kept.
By 2015-16 it's obvious the kids have more to give. Nash regresses again, so Zuccarello is looked at as the top offensive threat. However, Hayes sees 13 minutes a game and little PP time. Miller and Kreider could get more ice time but don't. Stepan and Brassard have clearly hit their ceiling. Oscar Lindberg shows flashes, but is deployed in a defensive role. Jesper Fast occasionally sees time in the top 6 though. Yandle posts a solid season and is traded to the Panthers for crap afterwards. So the return on Duclair is ultimately next to nothing.
2016-17 is another year of Zucc with no supporting cast. Nash is now the punchline of a joke. The only redeeming thing about this season is that Ottawa overvalued Brassard enough to trade Zibanejad to us for him. Jimmy Vesey and Pavel Buchnevich, meanwhile, pretty much prove my point. Buch is physically limited, but shows flashes of brilliance. Vesey plays Rangers Hockey (TM) but doesn't show offensive instincts and has a successful college career under his belt, so he plays in 80 games while Buch plays in half. Vesey can do no wrong, Buch can do no right (despite producing 50% more offfense than Vesey per game). Meanwhile, Lindberg remains mired on the depth chart in a defensive role. Both Fast and Grabner see top 6 time. In need of top line scoring, the team drafts...Lias Andersson. And then Filip Chytil.
2017-18 the chickens come home to roost as the team is downright bad. In need of blueline offense post Yandle, the team signs Kevin Shattenkirk, who promptly goes full Dan Boyle. Derek Stepan trade gets us Tony D'Angelo, an offensive defenseman who can't crack the lineup because defense or something (this from the team that dressed Nick Holden for 55 games). Fast and Grabner still see top 6 ice time at times. The KZB line establishes itself as a promising combination worthy of exploration but never seems to stay together for a full stretch of games. Literally everyone regresses. Nash looks like a third line grinder at best. David Desharnais gets 71 games to do absolutely nothing at all. McDonagh and Miller are traded in what is generally panned as a bad deal for a "puck moving defenseman prospect" - John Moore, Libor Hajek, they're all the same! Brett Howden, another kid whose scoring doesn't translate who will find himself cast in a grinding role, and Vlad Namestnikov, who the team envisions trying to replace Derek Stepan, I suppose, but is somehow worse. PAUL CAREY PLAYED 60 GAMES FOR THIS TEAM.
2018-19, Zibanejad finally gets ice time and steps up with a career year. 8th season in the league. Hayes produces his highest PPG rate year and is traded to Winnipeg for picks and Brendan Lemieux. Buchnevich is still fits and starts, in and out of the doghouse. Vesey, still having shown little offensive instincts, plays 81 games and continues to see top 6 time. The team trades for Ryan Strome and immediately falls in love with him because he reminds them of Stepan. Zuccarello is traded for picks. D'Angelo still doesn't get a look because Shattenkirk is shatting all over the ice. Chytil is used in a checking role. So is Lias Andersson. Non prospects Howden and Namestnikov see more ice time than both.
Quick, sign Panarin!
19-20: While this gives us an immediate legitimate offense for the first time in ages, it also carries Ryan Strome to look competent so naturally he's resigned, blocking Chytil at least another 2 years. Adam Fox debuts well, but oh, the team also signd Jacob Trouba to a ridiculous cap limiting contract. Tony D'Angelo has a career year, but it doesn't matter. He'll piss off his teammates and get dumped for nothing anyway, but with Fox in the wings and him still here, it's obvious we didn't need Trouba at all at the time. Meanwhile, Fast continues seeing top 6 time, and Chytil continues to be buried on the depth chart with Strome still here. Howden and Greg McKegg play Rangers Hockey (TM) and clog up the lineup nicely though. The Lias Andersson situation blows up. Meanwhile Brendan Smith is still skating on the wing. Lafreniere is the consensus #1 overall, and the Rangers draft another RD in Braden Schneider with their second first round pick meaning there will be at least 3 players in front of him (and let's be real, it looked like 4 the way D'Angelo played in 19-20). Somehow after a whole career of Lundqvist, Shesterkin looks good in limited time, so at least the goalie hangover doesn't look like it'll be too bad.
20-21: The D'Angelo situation blows up. Kravtsov debutes and shows potential in preseason, but is immediately buried on the depth chart. High risk, high reward prospect Julien Gauthier barely sees any meaningful ice time also. Chytil is still playing <15 minutes a game. Top picks Lafreniere and Kakko play only slightly more. Never fear! The team signed Colin Blackwell and continues to deploy Ryan Strome! Oh well, at least Buchnevich had a career year at 25 in his fifth season in the league.
...And he's gone. Who's excited for Sammy Blais and his career high 15 points in never more than 40 games?
The Kravtsov situation blows up. Now, yes, he went prima donna, but there's a part of me that sides with him in this too. Here's a list of players' games last season:
Dryden Hunt: 76 games
Ryan Reaves: 69 games
Kevin Rooney: 61 games
Greg McKegg: 43 games
Jonny Brodzinski: 22 games
Morgan Barron: 13 games
Tim Gettinger: 8 games
That is 292 man games on these players. You're telling me there wasn't a way to let Kravtsov and Julien Gauthier get 60-70 of those each? That Ryan Strome and his Derek Stepan like 54 points, and Barclay Goodrow really merited 18 and 16 minutes of ice respectively, over the kids? But, hey, at least Kreider finally had the career year he looked like was capable of way back in 2011-12 a full 10 seasons later! Loook guyz, we r good at developing the kidz!
Sorry, this is organizational rot, and it starts with the mindset of an ownership that can't actually commit to a rebuild. It doesn't mean jettison all talent and only play kids, it means keep the talent you have (now Panarin, Zibanejad, Kreider, Fox) and incorporate the kids into that. It means don't go out and sign Vincent Trocheck because you miss Strome, who made you miss Stepan, who made you miss Dubinsky, who made you miss Drury, who made you miss Bobby Holik, who was a disappointment in the first place. It means stop looking at these serviceable players as parts to be replaced, and see them for what they are - stopgap decent players that mediocre teams employ in topline roles when they don't have anyone better. Teams don't win Cups with players like this leading their offense.
And unless this team turns it around on how they deploy these kids, they're going to bust too. Will they be Buchnevich/JT Miller and find their game somewhere else? Will they go Malhotra/Korpikoski and become defensive specialists who never live up to the hype but are otherwise pretty decent? Who knows. But the Rangers will not win a Cup like this, and the last 25 years offer a compelling narrative why.
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