VANCOUVER, British Columbia — This was Jeff Gorton as Walter White absorbing Mike Ehrmantraut’s warning against taking half measures before the general manager took full measures of his own in the midst of a season that broke bad for the Rangers.
The era that bridged Jaromir Jagr, Sean Avery, Tom Renney, Ryan Callahan, Marian Gaborik, John Tortorella, Derek Stepan, Ryan Callahan, Dan Girardi, Rick Nash, Ryan McDonagh and Alain Vigneault is over, put to a decisive and necessary end by the GM who looked at his team’s reflection in the mirror and saw a club receding by the year and in need of dramatic change.
Say their names: McDonagh, gone; Nash, gone; J.T. Miller, gone; Michael Grabner, gone.
Learn their names: Libor Hajek, coming; Brett Howden, coming; Ryan Lindgren, coming; Yegor Rykov, coming. Vladislav Namestnikov, here.
This wasn’t the Purge of ’04 in which assorted spare parts — and Brian Leetch — were shipped away toward the end of a seventh straight season out of the playoffs. This wasn’t even the great shake-up of ’75 in which Eddie Giacomin, Jean Ratelle and Brad Park were shipped out.
This, rather, was a reckoning for the Rangers, who might have been able to camouflage all of the emerging bald spots with a comb-over but instead chose the righteous path.
There is no instant gratification here. Ownership knows it and so does management. If the scouts got this wrong and get this draft wrong, in which the club currently holds three first-rounders, two second-rounders and two third-rounders, well, then everyone will become immediately reacquainted with the proverb about good intentions and the road to hell.
You know, like 1999 and trading Niklas Sundstrom, Dan Cloutier, a first and a third for the right to select Pavel Brendl fourth overall.
But if Gorton and his player personnel people got it right, well, then the Rangers could have the makings of something. The first text I received in the wake of the McDonagh deal, in which the club acquired a WHL defenseman in Hajek, a WHL center in Howden, a first-rounder in 2018 and a conditional first in 2019, which becomes a second-rounder if the Lightning fail to win the Cup either this year or next, came from a talent evaluator who has never seen fit to pump the Blueshirts’ tires.
“Wow — great prospects for NYR,” he wrote in the unsolicited message. “High end.”
If the Rangers obtained a future franchise linchpin, Hajek, the Czech-born defenseman coming off an extremely impressive World Juniors, is most likely the guy. He is the Tampa Bay prospect who Gorton had targeted for weeks. He is the one, we understand, without whom the Blueshirts would not have gone through with sending their captain to a tax-haven reunion with Callahan, Girardi and Anton Stralman.
It is all but impossible to forecast what the Rangers will look like next season, before there is any expectation of this new wave of kids reaching Broadway. It appears as if they’re going to have a substantial amount of cap space, so they may well become a team that takes on dead space in the form of a long-term-injured-reserve player in exchange for another pick and/or another prospect. Or, it could become a team that goes a different route and signs a 35-year-old free agent by the name of Ilya Kovalchuk while so much of the development work takes place off Broadway.
But next year, though it will not be a throwaway season, is not the priority any more than this year was the priority for the Devils and look at them. There is only one shortcut available here, and that is through winning the lottery and jumping into no lower than a top-three spot. But management cannot plan on that, any more than New Jersey could plan on getting Nico Hischier. Chances are, there is pain ahead.
But there was no other credible alternative for the Rangers. This had gone past the point of pasting and patching, of robbing Peter to pay Paul. That had been their way for years. It produced a load of entertaining hockey in April and May, but the bill finally had come due. McDonagh wasn’t going to be 26 again, Girardi wasn’t going to be 25, Stepan wasn’t going to be 24, Nash wasn’t going to get 40 goals and Miller was still too young in all the wrong ways.
Midway through the season, Gorton surveyed the landscape and saw Ozymandias. Thus, the GM acted. No half measures this time.