It’s common in any professional sport that general managers always lose their minds at the trade deadline and free agency. With the deadline a mere month away for the Rangers and the Blueshirts being only six points out of a wildcard spot currently, there’s plenty of temptation for Jeff Gorton to go a bit crazy and forget the rebuild and focus on the now.

The worst thing the Rangers could do at this point would be to abandon the rebuild and go in on trying to make a wild card push for a team that isn’t a real Cup contender.

Last year we saw Columbus push all their chips to the middle of the table to make a real serious Cup push and it got them out of the first round by sweeping the Lightning but shortly thereafter fizzled against Boston. I for one applauded Columbus in their efforts because this was an organization that had never gone further than the first round of the playoffs so they needed to give their diehard fans something to believe in. Most teams would never have the guts to trade away a bunch of future firsts in the NHL that we’re currently in where draft picks have never been viewed higher, especially for a bunch of rentals. Not to mention not trading away two superstar assets that you knew you weren’t going to be able to retain in Bobrovsky and Panarin. Conventional wisdom said punt on last year and trade Panarin and Bob to get ransom packages in return and live to fight another day. The issue in a small market like Columbus, you can’t keep continuing to tell your fans “wait till next year, wait till next year”.

The Rangers are in and interesting place as well because they have the superstar in Panarin, the aging superstar who’s still looking for his Cup in Lundqvist, and then the young stars like Chytil, Kakko, Fox, Buchnevich, Zibanejad, and DeAngelo. The Rangers could turn on the rebuild and try and keep assets like Kreider and Georgiev and make their push for the playoffs this year after a two year hiatus from the chase for Lord Stanley.



However holding onto a pending UFA like Kreider would be a disastrous mistake for the franchise moving forward. The Rangers have a bit of a logjam at wing and they’re waiting on Vitali Kravtsov to emerge from Hartford and they’re not going to bring him up to give him bottom six minutes. Chris Kreider is 28 years old, which in this modern NHL is like being a 35 year old, and he’s on the last year of a 4 year contract which makes him an invaluable asset on the trade market. Kreider has explosive speed, a big body, and solid hands in and around the net which some Cup contending teams would pay a premium for. Especially when you consider what the Senators got for Matt Duchene, Mark Stone, and then what the Devils fetched this season for Taylor Hall. Holding on to Kreider and giving him a contract extension of likely 7M a year would be a mistake of cataclysmic proportions. Especially considering the fact that the Blueshirts will need to pay Tony DeAngelo and Ryan Strome this summer and they’re both in line for hefty pay raises.

Even though Kreider has turned his game around since the start of the season, it’s time for the Rangers to make another tough decision about yet another fan favorite. While it made be hard for some fans to digest, moving Kreider is what would be best for the franchise moving forward because if you’re not going to be able to pay him and keep him then you have no other choice but to move him for the best available package. The Rangers have made some great strides during this rebuild and they would be doing a great disservice to themselves and their fans if they decided to deviate now from the rebuild that started two and a half years ago.