The New York Rangers are in free-fall. They are 3-11 over the last month. There is intrigue in the front office, discontent in the locker room, and two disgruntled players have been shipped out of town in as many weeks, after Kaapo Kakko became Kaapo Kraken on Wednesday, with more threatening to come. There are a lot of moving parts to this implosion, and we thought you might have questions.
When did all the problems start?
In the summer of 1994, the Dolan family purchased the Rangers and—
Be serious.
I semi-am. But what you're asking about all kicked off on Nov. 25, when the Rangers put the word out via friendly reporters that they were willing and possibly even eager to trade some of their underperforming veterans. The Rangers being the Rangers, they did this publicly and hamfistedly. The timing was strange: They had lost two in a row, but were 12-6-1 at the time and right there in the battle for first place.
That early success looked a lot like the Rangers' success of the last few years, in which they appeared in two conference finals, in that it had some nasty trends being temporarily papered over. They were routinely getting beat at 5-on-5. They relied heavily on their power play and goaltending, and if they didn't get exquisite performances from both, they were very mortal. Their blue line was fragile and unbalanced. They looked like they have looked this decade: like a team destined for a playoff exit.
However, the "open for business" announcement was a shock because it mentioned two players by name: Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba. Kreider is the longest-tenured Ranger and beloved by teammates. He's underperforming, but not "put him on the trade block" underperforming. There was speculation that his inclusion in the leak was a clumsy attempt at motivating him. Players, on the whole, don't like that sort of thing. Trouba's name appearing was less of a surprise.
Oh yeah there was a whole thing with Trouba last offseason, right?
There was. The Rangers tried to trade Trouba over the summer, but he used his no-trade clause to functionally block a deal. The 30-year-old Trouba, the team captain and reigning winner of the Mark Messier Leadership Award Presented By Mark Messier, is in year six of a seven-year deal that pays him $8 million annually. It's a lot of money for a player whose game has aged poorly, so it's no surprise that New York GM Chris Drury, facing a cap crunch, wanted to get out from under it. It's also no surprise that Trouba had no intention of helping him out.
When a veteran negotiates an NTC, it's not just cosmetic. Guys want career security—they want to know that if they upend their families and set down roots in a new city, they won't have to do it all again in a few years, especially for a non-contending team. Trouba's wife was in the middle of a residency at a New York hospital, and the couple had a child last winter, and he didn't want to upset all that. It's understandable.
The Rangers have gotten around no-trade clauses before, though?
It feels like you know more about this than you've been letting on. Earlier in the offseason, New York ran into a similar issue with Barclay Goodrow. Goodrow had a stellar postseason for the Rangers last year, but he's a fourth-liner who was not being paid like one. The Rangers tried to trade him, and he blocked it with his no-trade clause. So New York found a loophole: Drury arranged a handshake deal with the woeful Sharks, who by virtue of their record had first crack at the waiver wire. The Rangers placed Goodrow on waivers and he was promptly claimed by San Jose. Goodrow could block a trade to the Sharks, but he couldn't block this. He was, to say the least, not thrilled about how it all went down.
This played poorly in the locker room. If they could do it a well-liked veteran like Goodrow, and they tried to do it to a well-liked veteran like Trouba, couldn't they do it to anyone? Players accept that hockey is a business, but business can absolutely feel personal.
So Trouba was still on the team to start the season? That bodes poorly.
It was bad, and Trouba's play was getting even worse, whether due to his dissatisfaction or otherwise. He found himself on the third defense pairing, and was by any measure a below-average skater. Drury, running out of patience, eventually let Trouba know the Rangers would pull a Goodrow on him and place him on waivers if he didn't waive his no-trade clause. Faced with the alternative of going to Columbus, which was in on him and likely would've gotten him thanks to waiver priority, Trouba accepted a Dec. 8 trade to Anaheim. It was almost a pure salary dump, with the Rangers getting the proverbial bag of pucks in return.
And that was the end of the Rangers' problems, right?
Oh my, no. They kept losing. They lost five straight. They lost to the last-place team in the league, and then, a week later, lost to the new last-place team in the league. They've lost 11 of their last 14, and scored just 33 goals in that span. They've looked awful: listless, uncreative, frustrating. If their early-season success was of unsustainable composition, they still shouldn't be anywhere near this dreadful. But just about everyone has underperformed, amid reports that everyone's more or less unhappy.
Head coach Peter Laviolette, who by accounts was not a target of the players' ire (it's more a players vs. GM beef), has tried pulling every lever available to him to try to spark something, and nothing's worked. One of those levers was to make Kaapo Kakko a healthy scratch on Dec. 15.
Finally, we get to Kakko. What's his deal?
The 23-year-old forward has not lived up to the hype since the Rangers drafted him second overall in 2019. It's been a real struggle the whole time, with assorted injuries thwarting his momentum, and the Rangers not exactly helping him by shuffling him up and down the lineup (usually down). He topped out with 18 goals and 40 points in 2023, the only season he managed to stay totally healthy. He appears to not have the creativity or the finishing to make his own action, but the Rangers have resolutely kept him off scoring lines that might've helped him out. It's been a textbook example of how not to develop a player.
Still, Kakko's not been a total bust. He's scored just four goals in what's been a nightmare season for him, but he's become an admirable defensive forward, and part of New York's most effective possession line. He's a useful player, on an affordable $2.4 million one-year deal before becoming a restricted free agent.
To put it succinctly, if any Ranger deserved to be a healthy scratch, I can think of a half-dozen guys it should've been before Kakko.
I imagine he was not happy about that.
You imagine correctly. After his benching on Sunday, Kakko spoke his truth. "I know you got to do something as a coach when you’re losing games," he said, "but I think it’s just easy to pick a young guy and boot him out. ... I have not been the worst guy, but that was me out of the lineup."
He's right!
He is.
So then what happened?
One day after his comments, Kakko was traded to the Seattle Kraken for defenseman Will Borgen and two picks. It's an uninspiring haul, and an admission of failure on such a high draft pick, but it's basically fair for Kakko's production.
Surely this will solve all of the Rangers' problems, right?
Yeah, I'm sure the already-miserable locker room will love a guy voicing his understandable frustration with being scapegoated, and then immediately being sent 3,000 miles away.
When a team is playing this poorly, it's never the fault of one or even two players, and the next thing you'd expect Drury to attempt would be to try to move the high earners who are scuffling, namely best pals Kreider and Mika Zibanejad. But those are supposed to be cornerstone players of this Rangers era, not complementary pieces like those who have been jettisoned this far. It's up in the air if Drury wants to go full rebuild or just try some patchwork fixes—he now has the cap space to potentially land some big fish, either at the deadline or next offseason—or what even has the owner's permission to do. It's a nasty situation all around, and there's no single transaction that can address an unhappy roster playing bad hockey.
So what is up with the Rangers?
Buddy, I have no idea.
