Br4d

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.

The biggest single effect of losing Panarin tomorrow would be a guaranteed top 6 slot at LW for Lafreniere and a guaranteed bottom 6 slot for one of Cuylle and Othman. Whether the Rangers would maintain their scoring pace would depend on whether Lafreniere could make real hay on PP1 and whether the bottom 6 LW was ready to steup up and be a star-in-waiting.

Fox is the best chance. Shesterkin outside chance tempered by his tendency to get injured so far. Things like that tend to get worse as you age. Nobody else on the team has established a chance at this point. If Panarin plays to 40 he'd probably do it.

I agree with everything you just said. However Colorado has their Cup in hand and they have a really good shot at another one. The Rangers aren't on that progression at this point. They're going to have to get very lucky to avoid getting stuck at tier 2 through the remainder of their veteran core contracts.

At 24 Matt Tkachuk just had a season better than either of them put together in their careers. That's what being very good in the NHL at 19-21 produces before the prime years. The prime years for Tkachuk are likely to blow away the prime years for Marchand and Wheeler. Put another way: Marchand 246 career goals, Wheeler 351 career goals, Matt Tkachuk at 24, 152 career goals.

Bad examples due to age. They weren't even in the NHL until after that 21 season that marked Matthew as a likely star.

At certain ages you see things out of players that bode well even if they aren't necessarily the hot phenom who is taking the world by storm. Matt Tkachuk put up 45+ pt seasons at 19 and 20. He had 37 goals between the two seasons. Then he had a kick-ass season at 21. That is exactly what you would expect out of a guy who was going to be a very good player down the road. Then we had the Covid seasons and he did well although not quite up to the standards of the 21 season they were clear 2L borderline 1L seasons. Then at 24 All-Star, MVP consideration, Selke consideration. 104 pts. 42 goals. +57. That's a progression that makes his prime likely to be very strong.

Matthew put up 34 and 77 pts as a 21 year old in his 3rd season. Generally speaking that's a sign that his prime is going to be great. It's not guaranteed superstar HoF numbers but in the modern NHL it's pretty good, maybe a step below that if he gets lucky and is on the right teams. Then we had the two seasons touched by Covid and his numbers fell just a bit, as many players did. Then we get to a "normal season" at 24 and he picks up the pace again and looks to be headed for that great prime again. Yes, it was a contract year, however it was exactly the season you'd have thought he'd have at 24 given what he did at 21. The two seasons in between were just weird and in truth he looked pretty good in them also, just not quite as good as you'd have expected given his 21 season. I'm really sorry the Panthers got their claws on him. It's not as bad as him winding up on the Hurricanes but it's still not good from a Rangers perspective. He's still likely to be a top 5 two-way LW from 25 to 27 and those are years we really want to compete.

This is the dilemma the Rangers face right now. Some of the kids haven't played well enough to date. The team as a whole has been just a bit lacking except for Shesterkin and the vets on the powerplay. However when you look at where the problem lies it is clear that it is in the missing production out of the young players. Kakko and Chytil haven't contributed enough for the minutes and match ups they have seen. Lafreniere has been good but not given enough of a role nor with the right support for his play to be a decisive factor for the team. So last year the Rangers made some deals at the trade deadline and fleshed out the top 6 to cover for the young guys who weren't progressing fast enough. This year they may have to do the same. At some point soon they're either going to have to get production across the board or stop patching every season and move on. The opportunity cost of keeping Kakko if he does not advance is likely to be another 1st round pick at the deadline. You can only do this for so long before the window closes inch by inch and the Rangers never had their best opportunity at a Cup.

If you're going to put out an offer sheet you have to be pretty sure the guy you are offering it to is worth it. An offer sheet for Kakko on any other basis just pisses off the Rangers and risks a tit-for-tat at some point for somebody who might actually be worth an offer.

Lafreniere is good for the opportunity he has received. 31 even strength goals thru his 20 season is a tantalizing pointer towards exactly how good he could be if given a full opportunity with strong players alongside him. You're 100% right that players often develop into good players and maybe even very good players later in their careers. However the team that went through all the crap years early on generally does not benefit from their development in the end. Zibanejad is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Everybody knew he had talent but the Rangers got the benefit of it not the Senators.

3 years in with very little to show for it is a very bad sign. If the Rangers want him to be a plus player they better give him big plus linemates. If that doesn't work over the first quarter of the season they're probably in package him at the deadline mode. If they put him on line 3 or line 4 the odds are overwhelming that next season will look like last season and then it's questionable whether they could even package him for anything worthwhile at the deadline. I still think the best answer at the start of the season is to give Zibanejad Lafreniere and Kakko. Lafreniere will be at his normal position with an excellent two-way C and Kakko can put his work ethic alongside both of them and try to make plays for them. It's probably the best shot the Rangers have to make something really good out of Kakko. Zibanejad and Kreider will still be a team on PP1.

Schneider is on track at this point. Most great players are great at his age, maybe a year older at the outside. This assuming they haven't been playing outside of North America and latecomers for that reason. This is one of the reasons Lafreniere is so important this year. If the Rangers don't get him on the star track this year they lose a significant amount of the potential that this ever happens. It's why Kakko's troubles last year were really troubling.

The issues the Rangers have going into '21-'22 are: 1. No RW for the top two lines. The guys they're depending on to fill those slots are Kratsov, Kakko or a move of Lafreniere to RW of which probably Lafreniere is the only option that looks notably top 6 worthy. All 3 options carry some risk. Kratsov is still an unknown at the NHL level. For all his talent we have no idea if he's going to be an NHL RW, let alone a top 6 guy. Also he's in Russia at the moment which makes his return to the USA an unknown factor until he's actually on the plane and out of Russian airspace. Kakko has had significant time in the NHL and so far he hasn't put it together at this level. He's a step late and missed open net waiting to happen at this point. He's very young and definitely could put it together but that is just a "could" at this point. Nobody would be surprised if he was packaged at the deadline this year. Lafreniere clearly has the talent and has proven his ability at the NHL level but he's making the switch to RW if this is the path the Rangers take and we have no idea if that switch would be profitable, breakeven or a setback. Odds are probably even on each possibility. 2. 3C is still Chytil on paper however 4 seasons play suggest he is marginal at 3C. The Rangers hope that his playoff run was a breakthrough and not just a 2 week hot streak. 3. Logjam at LW with Panarin and Kreider firmly ensconced and the Rangers considering moving Lafreniere to RW. Young talent abounds in Cuylle and Othman and Trivigno is a decent bottom 6 option. There are a lot of moving pieces on the Rangers at this point and a team that got 110 pts in the regular season and to the conference finals is very unlikely to have even one line that looks the same as it did last season. Given a coach who wants proven options the Rangers may be severely lacking in the consistency he demands, particularly given the number of young unproven players in the equation.

Not liking the trade at all from our standpoint.

That'd be a good 3rd line however you're still watching Chytil like a hawk because the guys on either side of him need support also if they're going to turn into what they should be.

I really don't want to keep the kid line together next season. I guess I am ok with trying it out for a few games but we need top 6 production out of some of the guys on that line. Based on what we've seen so far that seems unlikely to happen with them playing together again. I really want Chytil out of the picture. I think both of the other guys are more important and both of them need a proven C to support their growth. Kakko seems like a good fit with either Zibanejad or Trocheck. Lafreniere should be playing with one of those guys also, even if it means he has to go to RW.

I didn't say I was ok with his cap figure. In fact I've said several times I am not ok with his cap figure. I was just pointing out that Trouba had a major impact on the Rangers success in the playoffs last year. If Panarin had also we probably are in the final round and not arguing so much about his cap number.

The Rangers feel a bit like a team caught between eras at this point. With the exception of K'Andre Miller the really young guys have not performed at levels that suggest they are going to be stars at the NHL level. For the most part a guy who is going to be a great NHL player shows a lot of that in their first real opportunity and the Rangers young wings are not on that progression right now. The next youngest cohort are already stars in Fox, Shesterkin and to a lesser degree Lindgren. Then you have all the prime-time guys right now in Panarin, Zib, Kreider, Trouba, Trocheck and the supporting cast. It would be really easy for the prime-time guys to begin sliding out of the picture if the current wave of young forwards turns out to be not all we were expecting. The Rangers do have more talent in the pipeline but that talent is at least temporarily blocked by the young guys, causing likely delays in their arrival in the NHL.

Trouba's hits changed the outcome of both series. Crosby in game 5 in Pittsburgh, Domi in NY in game 4 and Jarvis in game 7 in Carolina. Huge momentum shifters in the first two cases and depriving Carolina of a much needed set of legs in game 7 - which turned into a rout.

The Rangers are in cap hell right now. It doesn't look like cap hell because we're keeping the high-cap players but the truth is the layers below them are rotting and the depth is already bad from a contender's perspective. The nightmare is that Miller proves out big time and the Rangers have to keep him at any cost and Lafreniere just idles along keeping the Rangers from being comfortable with the kind of 2 year deal he will demand after the season. That's where the imbalance in the cap really starts to look like hell.

They couldn't keep Copp and also sign Trocheck. That, BTW, gets the Ranger back to 4 top 6 forwards with a bunch of maybe's going into 2022-23. Their balance on the cap is still out of whack compared to the competition.

The Rangers last year had 4 top 6 forwards. Panarin, Zibanejad, Kreider and Strome. They had no RW's who were top 6 guys. They had several young guys who had top 6 potential. They had a couple of guys who didn't play in Kratsov and Blais who might have been top 6 guys. However none of the people in the two categories were guaranteed top 6 guys. They didn't fix this until near the trade deadline when they added Copp who was also a top 6 guy. A guy they ultimately couldn't keep for cap reasons. During the playoffs they played a decent checking line player on line 1 in Vatrano. He was a third line type of guy but not a bad one. Ultimately the Rangers top 6 depth did them in as they were unable to score 5v5 for long stretches of the post-season. The third line, the kids, played well at times and when they played well they helped cover the Rangers lack of depth in the top 6. However the facts were that with Strome injured and with the top line playing a checking forward at RW the Rangers 5v5 play was uninspiring and ultimately the cause of their loss of 4 straight at the end of the run. I would argue that the primary reason that the Rangers were so short on top end talent was that they were paying one forward - a non-primary scorer - $11.5M and they were paying two defensemen $17.5M between them. That was just too much cap tied up in 3 players and when they ran into a deeper team with better balance they were just under-manned for the challenge. This was true even though Brayden Point was out for the series. It wasn't that the Lightning weren't spending a lot on a few players because they were. It was that the Rangers balance on the cap was poor and they didn't have enough good top 6 wings to match up against the Lightning and when the Lightning got to match up their checking wing on the Rangers top lines the scoring balance at 5v5 was completely disrupted in favor of the Lightning.