Help will have to wait
Significant early trade unlikely for Blueshirts
REGARDING the Rangers, working on a victorious muscle memory in advance of Monday’s match at the Garden against San Jose.
1. Since the inception of the salary cap in 2005-06, there has been one major pre-January trade in the NHL. That was the Islanders’ swap of Matt Moulson (and a first and second) with the Canadiens for Thomas Vanek on Oct. 27, 2013. If you think the Nov. 15, 2005 deal in which Sergei Fedorov went to the Blue Jackets from the Ducks in exchange for Francois Beauchemin and Tyler Wright qualifies, well, that makes one of us.
2. On top of that, the Blueshirts have not made a significant pre-January deal since sending Marek Zidlicky, Tomas Kloucek and Rem Murray to the Predators for Mike Dunham on Dec. 12, 2002 in the wake of what would become Mike Richter’s career-ending concussion.
(And by the way, am I the only one who believes that Kloucek never really recovered from having his nose broken in a Jan. 30, 2002 fight with Alexei Yashin while the defenseless defenseman’s arms were pinned by Mariusz Czerkawski?) Which adds up to:
3. The likelihood is remote that the Rangers would be able to pull off an immediate franchise-turning deal as if it were 41 years ago and the Bruins’ Harry Sinden was available as a trading partner, even if general manager Jeff Gorton were looking to do so.
If and when management reaches the conclusion the Stanley Cup might be out of reach in 2018 for this assembled group, the mandate won’t be to paper over deficiencies for the short run to eighth place and “anything can happen if you get in,” but rather to look beyond this spring.
It makes no sense to move, say, Rick Nash, unless a future building block can be obtained in return. That is the kind of deal that is made around the deadline, not in October or November. It makes no sense to overturn the roster to add a support player. The Rangers have their share of supporting actors. They don’t have enough leading men.
If the Rangers believed that Alex Galchenyuk would be a slam-dunk second-line center, they would have to consider a deal with even more troubled Montreal in which Chris Kreider or Mats Zuccarello would be the exchange rate. But there is no evidence the Blueshirts covet the 23-year-old who’s playing on the wing and carries a cap hit of $4.9 million through 2019-20.
The center stage that Gorton surveyed over the summer has not appreciably changed. Teams are holding onto top sixers just as they are hoarding top-four defensemen. The Rangers hope that Filip Chytil and Lias Andersson will be ready next season. Help from getting from here to there does not seem to be on the way.
4. Alain Vigneault finally seems to have reached a comfort level with his defense pairs even if the coach needed to employ 12 distinct tandems in order to reach nirvana, and even if it requires him to go to a seven-defensemen lineup.
In moving Brendan Smith to Ryan McDonagh’s right side, the coach reunited the pair he had used in Smith’s first two games as a Ranger early last March, but not since.
The Marc Staal-Kevin Shattenkirk classic stay-at-home, puckmover partnership, has been intact for five straight games, thus quali- fying this pair for the Marek MalikMichal Rozsival Longevity Award.
And by using seven defensemen, Vigneault can play Nick Holden on Brady Skjei’s right (they played together twice last year) without losing Tony DeAngelo as his second power-play unit’s right point and shelter No. 77 from demanding five-on-five matchups.
This is probably not the optimum development plan for DeAngelo, who cannot be expected to thrive getting shifts that can come anywhere from 6-30 minutes apart. But for the moment, Vigneault doesn’t seem to be in a situation where he is consistently trying to get away from matchups.
5. Cutting down to 11 forwards has increased the ice time for Mika Zibanejad, Kevin Hayes and, notably, J.T. Miller, who has swung from wing on the second unit to share doubleshift time in the middle between Pavel Buchnevich and Michael Grabner with Mika Zibanejad.