Sentiment left the executive suite the moment Saturday’s final buzzer in Sunrise, Fla., signaled the death knell for the 2023-24 Rangers, and so did romancing the core.
Chris Drury, the general manager, is careful with his words when interacting with the press. He gives away nothing. And so, what Drury said during Friday’s conference call with the writers who have covered the team throughout the season was notable.
When I asked the GM if he believes the core — that has essentially been in place for four or five seasons — has enough playoff-type qualities to bring the Rangers to the next level, the answer was anything but pablum.
“I do believe in our players individually. We have a lot of good players here. A lot of players had great seasons,” Drury said. “A number of them have been Rangers for a long time.
“Now is the part of the job to figure out whether this group collectively can get us to where we want to be.”
Nevertheless, and this is likely a reflection of just how ingrained the core has become with the team identity, and certainly as it relates to senior letter-wearers Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad, but the first question Drury received after giving that answer was who the Rangers were going to look at to play right wing with Nos. 20 and 93.
I understood why multiple players and head coach Peter Laviolette called the season a failure three days after getting knocked out by the Panthers. By Game 6, it became a standing TKO.
So I got that the players acknowledged they had failed to accomplish their goal. But if you define this season as a failure, you honestly should pick up a new hobby. The Rangers finished with the most wins and points and compiled the third-best points percentage in franchise history. They won more games than any other team in the NHL. They won the Presidents’ Trophy.
Folks pay into the tens of thousands of dollars for tickets to the regular season. Folks obsess over every move and every play for the season’s six months. You’re telling me that the entirety of 2023-24 represented a failure?
The Devils were a failure. The Penguins were a failure. The Sabres were a failure. The Flames were a failure. The Wild were a failure. The Rangers play with a splash of flair, finished with the best record in the league, and that’s supposed to be a failure? What a laugh.
It’s not about culture. You think the issue is culture? What are you talking about? Did you watch them play this year? They’re not big enough. You really think that Zibanejad doesn’t care enough? He played 12 games the last two rounds going up against two of the most physical centers in the NHL in Jordan Staal and Aleksander Barkov, intermittently getting a Sam Bennett instead. That was not a matter of want.
They’re not mean enough. They’re not physical enough. They’re not built to specs that will get them to 16 wins in the playoffs. Their inability to score against Florida was equivalent to their inability to score against Tampa Bay two years ago.
Rehashing the Florida series inevitably leads to piling on. They did not get it done. You — and the Rangers — can talk about the one-goal losses, but both of the Rangers victories came in overtime. They could have been swept. They never really got to their game after going up 3-0 against Carolina. They went 3-6 their last nine games. They won two games in regulation after the Washington series.
Again. Zibanejad has a no-move clause. Kreider has a 15-team no-trade list that kicks in July 1. Zibanejad has been the Rangers’ best center since Mark Messier I. Kreider has not only evolved into one of the NHL’s best goal scorers, net-front presences and penalty killers, but he is on target to become the Rangers’ all-time leading goal scorer if he completes the remaining three years of his contract in New York.
There are no players who represent the core more than Kreider and Zibanejad. The question becomes whether Drury and the hierarchy can buttress the core by adding physicality around it? I guess maybe.
But here already is one obstacle. If the Rangers come to camp with Zibanejad, Vincent Trocheck and Filip Chytil as their top-three centers, where is the physical matchup line, where is the big, menacing third-line center? Not for nothing, but this is the team that gave Bobby Holik, the most menacing matchup guy extant, $45 million as a free agent and then played No. 16 on the first line.
It’s going to be the same thing, trying to construct three scoring lines. Over and over and over again. Except maybe not.
“We’re looking at a lot of different things and there are different ways to get to where we want to go,” Drury said. “To me, really nothing is off the table.”
Maybe I’m wrong — has happened before, like when I picked the Blueshirts to win the Cup — but I do not think the team’s priority at this moment is finding a right wing to play with Kreider and Zibanejad.
