There is still time for Chris Drury to salvage an offseason that was supposed to put everything on the table for the championship-starved Rangers, but he’s going to have to get creative.
The opening hours of NHL free agency on Monday saw a flurry of activity, but very little of it involved the Blueshirts. The market was flush with scoring wingers, which many believed to be Drury’s top priority, yet none of them landed in New York.
Jake Guentzel set the high mark by signing a seven-year, $63 million contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Then the Nashville Predators stole the day by locking up a pair of Stanley Cup-winning veterans in Jonathan Marchessault and Steven Stamkos. Patrick Kane decided to stay in Detroit, as did Sam Reinhart in Florida. And Tyler Bertuzzi (Chicago), Teuvo Teräväinen (Chicago) and Tyler Toffoli (San Jose) passed up better chances to win by taking more money to play for rebuilding franchises.
Meanwhile, the Rangers signed likely fourth-line center Sam Carrick to a three-year, $3 million deal − “He brings a hard element to our group,” Drury said − and turned to Plan B (or C) at right wing by acquiring veteran Reilly Smith from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for a relatively steep price of a 2027 second-round pick and a conditional 2025 fifth-rounder. The Pens softened the blow by retaining 25% of Smith’s $5 million salary, leaving the Blueshirts with a reasonable cap charge of $3.75 million.
“We’re very excited to get Reilly,” Drury said on a Zoom call with reporters. “He’s a player we’ve been looking at and talking about for a while. He brings a lot of versatility to our lineup. He has a winning pedigree. He won (a Stanley Cup) in Vegas, he’s a proven playoff performer, and I think just fits in nicely with our entire group. We were talking a lot of different agents and a lot of balls in the air throughout the day, and just felt this was the best move we can make.”
Part of the motivation for acquiring the 33-year-old Smith is that the Rangers are only on the hook for one year of his expiring contract, which Drury noted “sets us up well in the future to have some flexibility.”
They’re left with close to $9 million in available cap space – although well over half is expected to go to restricted free-agent defensemen Ryan Lindgren and Braden Schneider – and avoided making costly long-term commitments. But Smith, coming off a season in which he managed a modest 40 points (13 goals and 27 assists) across 76 games, does not move the needle in the way the top UFAs would have.
Perhaps Drury was wise not to overpay for players who may be past their primes, particularly with a cap crunch coming when Alexis Lafrenière, K’Andre Miller and most notably Igor Shesterkin are due for new contracts next summer. But if the mission statement is to end a title drought that just surpassed 30 years – which, make no mistake, it most certainly is – then the Blueshirts simply haven’t done enough.
This roster, as currently constructed, does not look ready to get over that hump. They’ve made it to the Eastern Conference Final two of the last three years, but that’s been largely on the back of goaltending and special teams. Their five-on-five play isn’t on par with the best in the league, as evidenced by a 48.49% xGF that ranks 23rd among 32 teams across the last three seasons, according to Natural Stat Trick.
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As the competition gets stiffer in the playoffs, praying for power-play goals and superman saves from Shesterkin becomes a flawed formula.
That was exposed again in this year’s conference final against the eventual champion Florida Panthers, who dominated possession and smothered the Rangers while allowing them to score only 12 goals in six games. Taking the next step will require elevating their 5v5 play to the tenacious standards of recent Cup winners, and it’s fair to question whether adding Smith and Carrick accomplishes that.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve the team and different areas that we talk about, but we’re happy with the moves we were able to make today,” Drury said.
What’s next?
Drury will continue to seek upgrades, but they’ll be hard to find on a UFA market that’s dried up quickly. Any signings from here on out will be second-wave bargain hunting, with Daniel Sprong and old friend Vladimir Tarasenko probably the best remaining options.
They’d offer alternatives to Smith and improve overall depth, but can any of them end the cycle of countless right wingers who have tried and largely failed to stick on the increasingly ineffective top line with Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad? Color me skeptical.
The Rangers have other needs, as well, including defensemen (they need to add at least one), center depth (they could use another there, as well) and general size, speed and snarl. They currently stand to mostly run it back at those positions, minus Barclay Goodrow and the outgoing UFAs, with center Alex Wennberg (San Jose) and defenseman Erik Gustafsson (Detroit) agreeing to new deals with new teams Monday.
Waiving Goodrow ruffled feathers but felt like a necessary evil to create the cap space needed to strike, which Drury called one of the “tough decisions as a GM you have to make.” It signaled his intention to shake things up, with that narrative advancing in recent days as the reality he was trying to move captain Jacob Trouba bubbled to the surface. But so far, efforts to make substantial changes have fallen short, with hard-to-pull-off trades now representing the best path forward.
Drury will attempt to uncover such a deal this summer, but may ultimately have to wait until next year’s trade deadline to snag a big fish or two. That’s not a worst-case scenario, but it’s not ideal, either.
Jacob Trouba situation unresolved
Speaking of trades, Trouba’s unresolved situation has been causing a stir.
The 30-year-old defenseman has been shopped in recent weeks and was required to submit his 15-team no-trade list by Monday, but still no deal has been consummated. Is it just a matter of time? Or is the whole thing in jeopardy?
“Any private conversation I had with him or his agent, I’m going to keep it private,” Drury said. “We’re always looking to move the team forward and be the best team we possibly can be. I’m not going to go through it player by player – who’s going to be here or who’s not going to go be here. We’re just trying to do the best we can in the offseason and put our best foot forward come training camp.”
Drury stressed that “Jacob knows what I think of him as a person and a player,” but those fuzzy feelings don’t appear to be mutual at the moment.
Trouba is not pleased with the way this has gone down and does not want to move his family, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, one of whom said it will require “a major clean up” to mend fences if the captain sticks around. His wife, Kelly, has a medical career in New York and their first child, Axel, arrived in January.
Freeing up at least a portion of his $8 million AAV may no longer be necessary now that all the high-priced free agents have signed elsewhere, which makes keeping Trouba for this coming season seem more feasible than it did a few days ago. But having that salary on the books for 2025-26, the final year of his contract, will be borderline unworkable, especially if his play continues to slip as it has the last two seasons.
The belief is that Drury wants to rip the band-aid off, with Trouba resigned to accept his fate now that the Rangers’ desire to move on has gone public. His home-state Red Wings still have over $21.5 million in available cap space, according to CapFriendly, and remain the most likely destination.
Regardless of how it turns out, the state of the locker room is a concern.
Trouba has been a central figure in establishing an all-for-one, selfless culture the last few seasons, while Goodrow was one of the team’s most respected veterans. There’s a perception among teammates that their situations could have been handled with more openness and dignity, according to one source, with those feelings extending to other team employees who have been let go in recent years. At the top of that list is longtime trainer Jim Ramsay, who was suddenly fired last year. He was not acknowledged upon his return to Madison Square Garden with the Montreal Canadians on Feb. 15, which apparently didn’t sit well with a number of players, either.
Vincent Z. Mercogliano is the New York Rangers beat reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Read more of his work at lohud.com/sports/rangers/ and follow him on Twitter @vzmercogliano.
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