What about the Rangers?

The New York Rangers are in free fall. They are 3-11 in the last month. There is intrigue in the front office, discontent in the locker room and two disgruntled players have been sent out of town in as many weeks, after Kaapo Kakko became Kaapo Kraken on Wednesday, with more threats to come. There are a lot of moving parts to this implosion and we thought you might have questions.

When did all the problems start?

In the summer of 1994, the Dolan family purchased the Rangers and…

He’s serious.

I’m semi-am. But everything you’re asking started on Nov. 25, when the Rangers spread the word through friendly reporters that they were willing and possibly even eager to trade some of their underperforming veterans. The Rangers, being the Rangers, did it publicly and clumsily. The timing was strange: They had lost two in a row, but at the time they were 12-6-1 and were right there in the battle for first place.

That early success was a lot like the Rangers’ success of the past few years, in which they appeared in two conference finals, in that it had some ugly tendencies that were temporarily hidden. They routinely beat them at 5 on 5. They relied heavily on their power play and their goaltending, and if they didn’t get exquisite performances from both, they were very deadly. Their blue line was fragile and unbalanced. They looked like they have this decade: like a team destined for the playoffs.

However, the “open to the public” announcement was a shock because it mentioned two players by name: Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba. Kreider is the longest-serving Ranger and beloved by his teammates. It’s underperforming, but not underperforming to “put it on the trading block.” It was speculated that his inclusion in the leak was a clumsy attempt to motivate him. Players, in general, don’t like that kind of thing. The appearance of Trouba’s name was not a surprise.

Oh yes, there was a whole stuff with Trouba last offseason, right?

There was. The Rangers attempted to trade Trouba over the summer, but he used his no-trade clause to functionally block a deal. Trouba, 30, team captain and current winner of the Mark Messier Leadership Award presented by Mark Messier, is in the sixth year of a seven-year contract that pays him $8 million a year. That’s a lot of money for a player whose game has aged poorly, so it’s no surprise that New York general manager Chris Drury, facing a salary crisis, wanted out. It is also not surprising that Trouba had no intention of helping him.

When a veteran negotiates an NTC, it is not just a cosmetic issue. Boys want professional security; They want to know that if they move their families and put down roots in a new city, they won’t have to do it again in a few years, especially for a team that isn’t a contender. Trouba’s wife was in the middle of a residency at a New York hospital, and the couple had a son last winter, and he didn’t want to upset all that. It’s understandable.

But have the Rangers skirted no-trade clauses before?

It sounds like you know more about this than you’ve let on. Earlier this offseason, New York ran into a similar problem with Barclay Goodrow. Goodrow had a stellar postseason for the Rangers last year, but he’s a fourth-line player who wasn’t paid as such. The Rangers tried to trade him and he blocked it with his no-trade clause. So New York found a loophole: Drury worked out a handshake deal with the woeful Sharks, who by virtue of their record were the first to earn the exemption. The Rangers placed Goodrow on waivers and San Jose quickly claimed him. Goodrow could block a trade with the Sharks, but he couldn’t block this. To say the least, I wasn’t thrilled with how it all went down.

This played badly in the locker room. If they could do it to a well-liked veteran like Goodrow, and they tried to do it to a well-liked veteran like Trouba, couldn’t they do it to anyone? Players accept that hockey is a business, but business can seem downright personal.

So Trouba was still on the team to start the season? That doesn’t bode well.

It was bad and Trouba’s game was getting even worse, whether due to his dissatisfaction or another reason. He found himself on the third defensive pairing and by any measure was a below-average skater. Drury, running out of patience, finally let Trouba know that the Rangers would Goodrow him and place him on waivers if he didn’t waive his no-trade clause. Faced with the alternative of going to Columbus, which was behind him and probably would have gotten him thanks to waiver priority, Trouba accepted a trade on December 8 to Anaheim. It was almost a pure salary dump, and the Rangers received the proverbial bag of pucks in return.

And that was the end of the Rangers’ problems, right?

Oh my god, no. They kept losing. They lost five in a row. They lost to the bottom team in the league and then a week later they lost to the new bottom team in the league. They have lost 11 of their last 14 and scored just 33 goals in that span. They looked horrible: apathetic, uncreative, and frustrating. If their early season success was of unsustainable composition, they still shouldn’t be anywhere near this terrible. But almost all have underperformed, amid reports that everyone is more or less unhappy.

Head coach Peter Laviolette, who reportedly was not the target of the players’ ire (it’s more of a fight between players and GM), has tried pulling every lever available to try to provoke something, and nothing has worked . One of those levers was making Kaapo Kakko a healthy scratch on December 15.

Finally we arrived at Kakko. What is your problem?

The 23-year-old forward has not lived up to expectations since the Rangers selected him second overall in 2019. He has been a real struggle throughout, with a variety of injuries thwarting his momentum and the Rangers They didn’t exactly help him by changing it. up and down the alignment (usually down). He finished with 18 goals and 40 points in 2023, the only season in which he managed to stay completely healthy. He doesn’t seem to have the creativity or finishing to create his own action, but Rangers have resolutely kept him away from goal lines that could have helped him. He has been a textbook example of how not to develop a player.

Still, Kakko hasn’t been a total failure. He has scored just four goals in what has been a nightmare season for him, but he has become an admirable defensive forward and part of New York’s most effective possession line. He’s a serviceable player, on an affordable one-year deal worth $2.4 million before becoming a restricted free agent.

To put it succinctly, if any Ranger deserved to be a healthy scratch, I can think of half a dozen guys who should have been before Kakko.

I imagine he wasn’t happy with that.

You imagine correctly. After being benched on Sunday, Kakko spoke his truth. “I know you have to do something as a coach when you’re losing games,” he said, “but I think it’s easy to pick a young guy and throw him out… I haven’t been the worst guy, but that was me out of the lineup.”

You are right!

He is.

So what happened?

A day after his comments, Kakko was traded to the Seattle Kraken for defenseman Will Borgen and two picks. It’s an uninspiring haul and an admission of failure at such a high draft pick, but it’s basically fair to Kakko’s production.

Surely this will solve all of the Rangers’ problems, right?

Yeah, I’m sure the already miserable locker room would love it when a guy expressed his understandable frustration at being made a scapegoat and then immediately sent 3,000 miles away.

When a team plays this poorly, it’s never the fault of one or even two players, and the next thing you’d expect Drury to try would be to try to move the top-earning players who are struggling, namely best friends Kreider and Mika Zibanejad . . But those are supposed to be core players from this era of the Rangers, not complementary pieces like the ones that have been discarded until now. It’s up in the air whether Drury wants to do a full rebuild or just try some patch solutions (he now has the cap space to potentially land some big fish either at the deadline or next offseason) or even what You have the owner’s permission to do so. It’s an unpleasant situation all around, and there isn’t a single transaction that can fix an unhappy roster that plays bad hockey.

So what’s up with the Rangers?

Dude, I have no idea.