Eight years after the Letter. Rangers are doing it…
The Rangers have been right here before. For the second time in eight years, the workforce has issued a letter declaring the season lifeless, the Stanley Cup window closed, and saying the graduation of a partial teardown they hope will sometime lead to the Canyon of Heroes.
Let’s go back in time to Feb. 8, 2018, when the authors of the Letter 1.0 had been then-GM Jeff Gorton and then-president Glen Sather and the phrases had been virtually equivalent.
The Rangers had been coming off a string of seven consecutive seasons in which they made the playoffs under John Tortorella and then Alain Vigneault. With Henrik Lundqvist main the method, they made the convention finals in 2012, misplaced to the Kings in the 2014 Stanley Cup Finals, and then gained the Presidents’ Trophy and made the closing 4 again in 2015. That was adopted by two early playoff exits and then a last-place season in 2018, prompting Gorton and Sather to do what Drury just did.
The trades
Rick Nash was the first to go, despatched to Boston for three gamers including Ryan Lindgren, and two picks including a No. 1 in 2018. One of the other gamers. Ryan Spooner, was flipped early the next season for Ryan Strome. This deal was a winner.
Next up was Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to Tampa Bay for Vlad Namestnikov, Libor Hajek, Brett Howden, a first- and a second-rounder. The Rangers obtained little or no from those gamers and the Lightning gained two Stanley Cups, making the deal a major dud.
Mats Zuccarello, Kevin Hayes and ultimately Marc Staal could be despatched packing, as nicely, as the Rangers began to assemble a new core heading into the COVID period and David Quinn regime.
Chris Drury’s 2026 letter to followers
What went incorrect?
Drafting and development. Vitali Kravtsov was a waste of the ninth-overall decide in 2018 and, after they hit on Okay’Andre Miller at 22, Nils Lundkvist never made it on Broadway at 28. The Rangers gained two ping-pong ball lotteries. They picked Kaapo Kakko No. 2 in 2019 and Alexis Lafreniere No. 1 in 2020. Neither has change into a star.
What went proper?
The Rangers had a few fortuitous circumstances that helped them get back to the convention finals in both 2022 under Gerard Gallant and 2024 with Peter Laviolette, when they also gained the Presidents’ Trophy.
J.T. Miller was traded after the first Rangers letter — may he be moved again? JASON SZENES/ NY POST
The largest issue was having Igor Shesterkin prepared to step in for The King. Adam Fox pressured his method to his childhood workforce by threatening the Hurricanes and Flames, the first two groups that owned his rights.
And in July of 2019, the Rangers signed Artemi Panarin to a seven-year, $81.5 million contract, placing him in the dialog with Adam Graves as the Rangers’ best free-agent signing.
Will there be a pot of gold at the end of this retool?
Panarin figures to be the participant who would fetch the most in a deal, even as a rental. Are they prepared to commerce J.T. Miller or Mika Zibanejad, who would have worth, or are they half of the core to which Drury was referring?
It’ll be laborious to duplicate the circumstances that introduced Shesterkin and Fox to the workforce, and there aren’t many Panarins on the free-agent market anymore.
Can we anticipate the Rangers to draft and develop gamers better than they’ve over the past eight years?
The retool truly began last season with the trades of Kakko, Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider. Can Drury get more in this next spherical of trades than he did for them?
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