VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Regarding the team now identified as Rest of the Rangers, or in the Olympic spirit, ROR:
1. Left unsaid in the decision to trade Ryan McDonagh to Tampa Bay on Monday is management’s belief the Blueshirts were/are in need of a more inspirational and perhaps even confrontational personality as team captain.
No one would dare dispute McDonagh’s character, commitment, toughness or work ethic. The man played the final three games of the 2015 conference finals on a broken ankle, for goodness sakes. He was a lead-by-example guy since getting the “C” at the start of 2104-15.
But with Alain Vigneault, a coach who believes in leaving the locker room to his player leadership core, there was a sense that the club needed a captain who would get in his teammates’ faces when necessary and that McDonagh was not that kind of leader.
Had such a player emerged, the Rangers might have considered changing captains, as the Sharks did in going from Joe Thornton to Joe Pavelski; as the Kings did in moving from Dustin Brown to Anze Kopitar; as the Devils once did in going from Patrik Elias (after one year) to Jamie Langenbrunner and, before that, from Bruce Driver (after one season) to Scott Stevens; as the Islanders did in moving from Clark Gillies (after one year) to Denis Potvin in the offseason preceding their first Stanley Cup; and as the Blueshirts themselves did way back when, in going from Harry Howell to Red Sullivan. But no such alternative presented itself.
The next captain more likely than not will come from the outside in the person of a veteran with characteristics similar to, say, Martin St. Louis, who might have inherited the position vacated by Ryan Callahan’s trade if No. 26 had more than one year remaining on his contract when McDonagh was named instead.
That’s the Type A type of veteran management will be seeking this summer in advance of a 2018-19 in which most of the rebuilding will take place off Broadway.
2. The judgement regarding Vigneault’s fate, and the identity of his successor if management opts to make a change, are obviously management’s most critical twin decisions of the offseason.
Toronto’s rebuilding process accelerated when Mike Babcock took over behind the bench two years ago, just as Boston’s reboot got a charge when the Bruins replaced Claude Julien with Bruce Cassidy during the middle of last season.
If missing on a top-10 first-rounder this June would be deadly, going the wrong way on the coaching decision would set back the program by years.
I would not be surprised if St. Louis is in the mix for an assistant’s job next season regardless of the call on Vigneault.
3. The Rangers had become convinced J.T. Miller’s coachability issues were not linked to Vigneault and they were concerned he had regressed in his work habits and off-ice preparation, according to individuals familiar with the inner dynamic.
As such, they were not going to grant Miller, an upcoming restricted free agent with arbitration rights, the long-term deal for between $5 million and $5.4 million per season that would have been required to keep him off the open market following next season. Had the parties gone to arbitration on a one-year deal, Miller likely would have been in the $4.5 million range during what would have been his walk season. That was the impetus behind the decision to include him in the deal with the Lightning.
4. There is unanimity across the talent-evaluators’ board that Libor Hajek, the 20-year-old defenseman obtained from the Lightning, is the highest-end prospect with the best chance of becoming an impact player obtained by the Blueshirts in this housecleaning.
Defenseman Ryan Lindgren, who came from Boston as part of the Rick Nash deal, is heralded as “a warrior who will always stand up for his teammates” by one individual intimately familiar with the University of Minnesota sophomore’s game.
5. Rangers fan at 3:30 Monday afternoon: “I’m in for the rebuild.”
Rangers fan at 8:30 Monday night: “Maybe we can sign John Tavares as a free agent and trade two first-rounders plus a couple of younger guys to Ottawa for Erik Karlsson and get this rebuilding process moving more quickly.”