Rangers Lose Shesterkin, Fox And Any Hopes Of Salvaging Their Season

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First it was Trocheck in Game 2 of the season. Then it was Fox after Thanksgiving. JT Miller before Christmas. The Rangers disastrous first half surely wasn't helped by injuries to key pieces for significant stretches right from the jump. And just when you thought, finally, the band was about to get back together with Miller shedding his non-contact jersey fresh off a big-time Winter Classic dub…the hockey gods dealt the Blueshirts their most significant blow yet. Their $11.5M backbone, sitting 3rd in the league in save percentage & 6th in goals-against among full-time starting netminders, was carried off the MSG ice with what's seemingly a significant left leg injury.

Good news? It doesn't seem like it's anything catastrophic for Igor Shesterkin. The fact that he's not on LTIR immediately (10 game minimum absence) signifies his injury isn't as bad as we all feared. The Rangers upcoming schedule includes 12 games in 23 days so Shesty's certainly gonna miss a decent chunk of crucial contests. Still, crisis potentially averted.

Or so I thought.

Bad news? Someone else is headed to LTIR instead of Igor. I'll give you a hint - he just got back from LTIR…

Listen, as a homer fan I had high hopes for this team's chances to bounce back before the season started. No parades. Just a competitive season with a (likely brief) playoff appearance. Reality is a motherfucker though. This squad is nowhere near good enough to overcome missing even one key piece let alone arguably their most important two. With the worst point-percentage in the East & half the conference to leapfrog the task at hand was already gonna be tough. But losing Fox until (at least) after the Olympics on top of Shesterkin for likely a couple weeks at minimum is the nail in the coffin on this 25-26 Rangers season.

So what happens now? Who knows. Jonathan Quick should be able to shoulder the short-term load without much of a drop-off but he'll be backstopping a squad that'll continue failing to provide run support without their point-per-game defender & PP QB. The Blueshirts are tops in the league by a good margin in games scoring less than 2 goals (16 - only 4 other teams are even in double digits). They score at a league-worst 1.89 clip on the road, with the next-worst being a half-goal ahead of them. Lafreniere is still on track to be the most disappointing 1OA pick this century not named Yakupov. Brennan Othmann is 31 games deep into his career and can't even get 10 minutes of NHL ice time let alone his first goal. Gabe Perreault is at least getting some opportunity but clearly (and expectedly) isn't setting the league on fire yet.

There's no real internal pivot to make here in terms of this organization's immediate future. A complete tear-down isn't happening. Teams that trade for a 32 year-old captain, invest $11.5M in their goalie and ink a $7M/per 30 year-old defenseman aren't teams that are gonna blow it all up a year later. But big decisions are gonna have to be made. Time to get Soucy's 12-team no-trade list. Time to start talking to Panarin's camp, find out the spots he'll accept a trade to & hammer out an underwhelming but necessary return. And the juiciest piece they simply have to dangle now - Vincent Trocheck. It's such a heavy, heavy seller's market. Trocheck is exactly the type of center to start a bidding war among playoff teams and, with 3 years left at $5.625M, his contract is gonna be peanuts as the salary cap continues to skyrocket.

This team as currently constructed simply has no upside. Core is only getting older with no youth definitively ready to grab the baton. Trading Trocheck (who has a 12-team no-trade that'd likely just eliminate bottom-feeders) is the only way to infuse the Rangers with some youthful hope that may be able to turn things around sooner than later. They have all the leverage to dictate a bombshell return for an all-situations center scoring at almost a 70-point pace with plenty of that revered playoff sandpaper. What's Minnesota got left? The Kings just cleared Danault's salary which fits Trocheck perfectly in a wide-open Pacific. There's definitely win-now organizations willing to mortgage three years of prospect growth for 3 years of an immediate & significant upgrade to their Cup chances. Especially considering how the pending free agent market has dried up, opportunities like this won't come as easy as the league's been used to.

Let's see if the Rangers will finally accept their reality, as I have, and find the stones to do something about it.

VIVA LA BLUESHIRTS!!!