by Deb Seymour ~ November 11, 2022
Trade deadlines in sports are about trying to catch lightning in a bottle; and last season, the NY Rangers actually managed to do it.
That’s not to say the Rangers caught the Tampa Bay Lightning in a bottle — because they certainly didn’t. But they caught just enough lightning to make it through the playoffs to the Eastern Conference Finals; and had they played their best hockey in the postseason, they likely would have made it through the ECF to the Stanley Cup Finals.
The team’s most notable trades conducted prior to the March 21st deadline were for Andrew Copp of the Winnipeg Jets (costing what ultimately became a first round draft pick, a conditional second round draft pick, and Ranger prospect Morgan Barron); Frankie Vatrano of the Florida Panthers (costing a fourth round draft pick); Tyler Motte of the Vancouver Canucks (costing a fourth round draft pick); and Justin Braun of the Philadelphia Flyers (costing a third round draft pick).
On paper, these looked to be good trades, even with Copp being the most costly — but on the ice, the trades turned out to be even better. At the trade deadline, the Rangers’ record was 40-18-5. They finished the season at 52-24-6. Last season was a Vezina Trophy season for Rangers’ starting goaltender Igor Shesterkin, who “stole” multiple games for the team throughout the season and postseason — but there’s no question that adding Copp, Vatrano, Motte, and Braun was a large factor in the Rangers maintaining a comfortable record in the latter portion of the season.
The problem with lightning in a bottle, though, is that it doesn’t last. If you’ve ever caught a firefly and bottled it up just to watch it regularly light up, you’re familiar with the phenomenon. Unless you set the firefly free fairly quickly, it won’t live and your sporadic bursts of light will disappear.
Most deadline trades are made for players who are becoming free agents at the end of the postseason, whether the team makes it that far or not. (It’s only logical — as the better players aren’t the ones teams would want to lose mid-season unless they’re fairly compensated for the loss, and the player was likely to go elsewhere after the season in any event.)
And none of the key players for whom the Rangers traded last season was able to be re-signed by the team; they all elected free agency and went elsewhere. Of course, this was largely due to the Rangers’ salary cap situation — so it came as no real surprise.
But here’s why I keep alluding to “lightning in a bottle.” The post-trade-deadline Rangers of the 2021-2022 season exist no more. In addition to some of the players for whom they traded being gone, several others became free agents and signed elsewhere. And that flashy team of April and May 2022 is no longer trapped in the bottle. There’s also a lesson in there somewhere about why teams have to take advantage of the trapped lightning while they have it.
Rationally, the 2021-2022 Rangers, who had a new head coach and were just coming off a rebuild, weren’t supposed to make it even as far as they did in the playoffs. Some lucky bounces went their way. But they also had the team components and chemistry to take advantage of that window of opportunity. If anything, it was a learning experience for the players who remain.
But now they have to find and recapture some of that lightning, and waiting for the trade deadline is not the solution. Their Thursday night 8-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings was a great start. The forward lines may have found some of the beginnings of chemistry; and the defensive pairings, when no one is injured, are pretty settled. This is no longer a team in a rebuild. The “kids” who fit together so well on the “kid line” are no longer rookies, and the top six need to step up and show why they’re the top six.
If the Rangers can get some scoring out of their defense (apart from Adam Fox) as they did last night, that would just be gravy. No matter what, however, this team needs to recapture some of its lightning, and quickly. Or else at the trade deadline, there may not even be a bottle solid enough to hold it.
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