Blueshirts have crucial decisions to make with influx of young D-men
BETWEEN the Devils’ first Stanley Cup in 1995 and third in 2003, general manager Lou Lamoriello traded Jaroslav Modry, Cale Hulse, Chris McAlpine, Jason Smith, Sheldon Souray and Mike Commodore in deals to shore up the perennial contender’s roster.
Those defensemen were all between 22 and 25 years of age when sent away, some for rentals, and they combined to play 4,112 games in the NHL, ranging between McAlpine’s 289 and Smith’s 1,008 big league matches.
But the Devils were stocked on the blue line, starting with the pair of Great Scotts, Stevens and Niedermayer, who were augmented during their Era of Excellence by Ken Daneyko, Brian Rafalski, Colin White, Bruce Driver, Tommy Albelin and short-time acquisitions Shawn Chambers, Vlad Malakhov and Oleg Tverdovsky.
Now, there was no salary cap when 16W off the New Jersey Turnpike was known as the Exit of Champions. Perhaps economic constraints would have created a different environment. The fact, though, is that the Devils had too many contestants and too few seats for them to fill, so management (in the singular person of Lamoriello) had to make hard choices in order to cull the herd. That is what Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton, with advice and consent from president John Davidson and assistant GM Chris Drury, will be tasked with doing over the next several months into the next several years.
The organization’s replenishment of the pipeline, most specifically on the blue line, will force critical personnel decisions and create the need for accurate early evaluations of prospects in an era in which there will be not only a hard cap, but a relatively flat cap for the foreseeable future.
True, there is neither a Stevens nor a Niedermayer ensconced on Broadway, but there is an Adam Fox and there is a Jacob Trouba with a full no-move through 2023-24. Those guys are easy calls. But the rest are not, even as K’Andre Miller has gone about his rookie season with the promise of a player who could wear the Blueshirt into the next decade, and even as Ryan Lindgren has exhibited the on-ice persona of a guy who surely has a stitched-on letter in his future.
That is because even younger ones are crowding from below, starting with Zac Jones — the 20-year-old three days removed from winning the NCAA championship with Massachusetts, who was on the ice at the Blueshirts’ practice facility Tuesday morning after signing his entry-level contract.
Jones drove to New York and tested negative for COVID-19, so there is no required quarantine period for the skilled lefty, who is strong at both ends of the ice. He will practice with the club, and when coach David Quinn deems he is ready, Jones will get a shot.
Yes, the Rangers are focused on the playoff race — four points back of the Bruins, who have 17 games remaining to the Blueshirts’ 15 — but if the staff believes Jones can add more value than current third left D, Libor Hajek, he will play. The 23-year-old Hajek, by the way, has made significant progress in this first pro season, through which he has avoided a major injury.
“Obviously there’s a familiarity with him from my end of it, but this is a guy we’ve thought a lot of since we drafted him and then suddenly went on to have a great college career,” Quinn said of Jones, the 2019, 68thoverall third-rounder drafted out of the USHL TriCity Storm. “We’ll see how it goes.