Br4d

It's really depressing to see the kid line apparently in the plans again. If the Rangers think that Laf will not draw an offer sheet next year they are deluding themselves. Can't hide him on the 3rd line and watch him produce 3rd line numbers and keep him also.

96-97 Was the last year that Messier and Leetch were both still star caliber and Gretzky was just fun to watch. I wish I had paid more attention to the Oilers in Gretzky's early years. We're never going to see a talent like him again.

Seriously, with the 1st round pick it shouldn't take 3-4 years to develop the player. Anybody with the talent to go that high should be in the NHL in a couple of seasons. If you can't do this regularly you should be adjusting your scouting and your development teams until you can. After the 1st round it's a different situation but with that first pick you should be getting somebody who is close to ready to go.

It's so much easier waiting for the first game after a long run in the playoffs the year before. It feels like Game 6 was just a month ago.

The King is back! Long live the King!

Dolan's been a bad owner for the Knicks because he thinks he understands basketball. He's been very neutral for the Rangers because he knows he knows nothing about hockey.

I haven't skated in 41 years but I would definitely be there.

There's no cap crunch in that scenario but the rebuild is stalled and we lose a prime year out of the established players already playing at a high level. In other words we're in a worse position than we were at the end of this season. I really wish the Rangers had made a choice at defense this off-season, probably a Lindgren trade, and gotten an established top 6 wing to balance the cap a bit better. I'm not in the dump Kakko camp but I'd rather have seen the Rangers trade him for a reliable 3C and move Chytil to LW on the 3rd line this season. Goodrow or Gauthier could have played RW on that line. In other words I'd rather the Rangers weren't relying on 4 prospects working out to give them a solid top 9 with two of the guys required to play in the top 6. It just seems so unwieldy at this point - like Zibanejad and Kreider and Panarin aren't going to have enough help (again) unless the Rangers get very lucky.

For me the real question is not next year's cap crunch as much as did the Rangers do enough to set the team up for this season? If we make the playoffs again and make a run the cap crunch at the end of it will be bearable. If we wind up on the cusp of the playoffs and then get blown out in the first round, well the cap crunch next year could feel really bad. If we don't make the playoffs the cap crunch is just going to suck no matter how you look at it.

Good prospect is not star. I do think K'Andre through two seasons is on the best pace a Ranger has been on in awhile. He's big and has his head in the game. It's just a question of whether he will clean up the small gaps in his play and become a very good or great player instead of just a solid top 4 guy. He's huge and if he puts it all together he's going to be great. Lafreniere is in a similar position. He still has some gaps but there is no shortage of effort on his part. He needs to turn it up some this year or he's going to become hard for the Rangers to hold on to, particularly if K'Andre steps it up. We should probably do a list at some point of who the best players who have been drafted in the 1st round each year are and where they were drafted. The Rangers have now had a #1 overall pick and another guy up near the top. Those are the guys who have the best chance to be very good right off the bat and with the Rangers it just hasn't happened.

Who are the star players the Rangers have drafted in the 1st round over the last decade? I could be wrong but I think they are 0-fer-10 at this point in actually drafting a major star in the 1st round. This is a *huge* failure on the part of the scouting and drafting apparatchiks on the Rangers the last decade. The last star the Rangers drafted in the 1st round who became a star with the Rangers was Chris Kreider in 2009!

The house cleaning in the scouting department is long overdue. With the exception of Shesty and Kreider the Rangers best players all came in from outside the organization. You can't do that for long without getting capstrung and the Rangers are capstrung right now.

Trouba is the right guy for the job. Leads by example and gives up his body whenever the play requires it.

I think it's an iffy deal for Calgary but it does resolve the question of whether they will be sellers at the trade deadline. If the cap expands by 15-20% over the course of the deal Calgary made a good deal. if for any reason it does not, well they'll be unhappy later in the deal.

Graves made Kakko look like Guy Lafleur by comparison.

Definitely Graves. Went from two-time disappointment to the guy who threw his stick up in the air at the horn in '94.

How many of the Rangers 1st and 2nd round prospects of recent years are sunk costs at this point? The scouting department overhaul may be based on the organizations interpretation of the question above.

The Rangers have done a particularly bad job of scouting frontline talent in the draft over the last decade. Good at finding defensemen and pretty poor at finding impact forwards. Change is generally good.

https://www.silversevensens.com/2013/2/9/3968402/top-25-under-25-no-6-mika-zibanejad Everybody thought Zibanejad belonged at the NHL level. Injuries aside he was seen as an excellent prospect who was doing a lot of the things you need to do to play in the NHL.

I'm not looking at numbers particularly. I'm looking at Kakko and nothing suggests that he is going to be a great player at this point. And really many players do not buck the trend. A few buck the trend and then we can point at them and "look it can happen." As an example: Zibanejad at 19 and 20 didn't look like a great player except for brief flashes here and there. Then he stepped up in his 21 year and was a solid player, scoring 20 goals. He had established that he could play at the NHL level, sometimes quite well. He also had weirdness to deal with at the start due to the NHL lockout. Out of Kakko we've had very little to go on so far. Basically his big strength right now is that the Rangers have the puck more often when he is on the ice than not and while that is a good thing it doesn't show up as much in the +/- as it should because he's neither a scorer or playmaker based on what we have seen so far. He could break out at 21 like Zibanejad did but by this point in his career Zibanejad had already established that he was an NHL player - the only question was whether he was a really good player or just a roster spot in the bottom 6. Maybe Kakko's career would have advanced further at this point if the Rangers had a way to send him back to Finland in his 18 season the way the Senators returned Zibanejad to Sweden when the NHL just looked to fast for him at 18.

Most players have shown strong hints of what they ultimately will be when they are two full seasons in. With Kakko you have to give him a small benefit of the doubt because 2020 was such a screwed up season. It's hard to develop as a young player in the kind of bubble the Rangers played in. Tough teams all over the place particularly for a Euro player to acclimate in. That said, he really hasn't shown even flashes of being a great player. Not at any point in his tenure here. That generally means he isn't likely to be a great player.

The contract will be very movable at TDL. The acquiring team will have him for another year at a reasonable cost. I hope Kakko is a top 6 guy for us out of the gate this year and we wind up happy with his production. If not he's a chip to get another top 6 player at the deadline.

Bure had 437 goals and he was part of a very good Vancouver team that never won a Cup. I think he was a marginal Hall of Famer. To get into the Hall Panarin is either going to have to score more goals or have the Rangers become a consistent contender and probably win a Cup or two.

Panarin is 30 and he has 187 goals and 569 pts in his NHL career with no Cups in the cupboard. He's maybe a 2% chance to go to the HoF at this point. 5 more years and he's likely to have 320 goals and 975 pts or so. That's not a Hall of Fame career unless you won a few cups along the way.

They're older and they're Canadian. Tkachuk was a young US player and Calgary probably never felt like a real long-term option. If Huberdeau and Weeger are planning on raising families Calgary may be just what they are looking for.