2025 Rangers Report Card: K'Andre Miller

This post is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2024-25 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

Expectations

The next step. 

Right? That’s kinda what we all expected from K’Andre coming into this year: that he would take the next step? That he would evolve from a player with great tools to a great player. That he would supplant Ryan Lindgren as Adam Fox’s partner on the first pair and show off enough high-end skill and performance to warrant a long term extension alongside Igor Shesterkin and Alexis Lafrenière. 

Those seemed to be reasonable expectations for Miller as he entered his 5th year in the league.

Didn’t really work out that way.

Performance

Season Total: 74 GP, 7 G, 20 A

Statistically, Miller’s season wasn’t all that different from his 2023-24 season where he recorded eight goals and 22 assists in 80 games. Even his time on ice checked in at roughly the same 21-plus minutes as he had last year. His oiGF (3.1) and oiGA (3.5) were both very similar to last year’s rates, as were his xGF (56.1) and xGA (63.9). That’s the problem, though. The expectation was that he would improve, and the reality is that he didn’t. What’s worse is how he got to that statline. 

Miller’s season was plagued with long stretches of ineffective—bordering on soft—play. Both statistically and to the eye test, Miller’s best stretches of play came when he was partnered with Adam Fox, so of course Coach Dumbass hardly ever used those two together. Even with Ryan Lindgren injured at the outset of the season, it was Braden Schneider and his separated shoulder that got the call to play on the first pair even if that meant switching him to his off side, because of course Miller and Trouba had to be together. Many of us here, recognizing that Trouba’s play and emo attitude following a summer of trade rumors were serving as an anchor big enough to drag down an aircraft carrier, were willing to give Miller some grace. Mercifully, Drury ended the Miller-Trouba partnership in early December by shipping Trouba and his emotional baggage to the Anaheim Ducks. This created the perfect opportunity for Peter Laviolette to examine his D-pairs and put together the units that made the most sense, including sparing Adam Fox the pain of having to carry a clearly declining Ryan Lindgren, and putting him with the much more physically talented K’Andre Miller. Yeah.

Miller missed some time with injuries leading up to the Christmas break and when he came back he would spend the majority of the season paired with Will Borgen, acquired from the Seattle Kraken for Kaapo Kakko. This partnership seemed to work out pretty well as Miller’s level of play certainly improved with Borgen from where it was with Trouba. There were flashes of really high-end play both defensively and offensively, physical dominance, a real snarl to his game and gorgeous offensive plays like this goal against Nashville.

Unfortunately, they were only flashes and they were bracketed by stretches of just abject crap. I can’t remember how many times Sam Rosen, Joe Micheletti, and the studio crew sat there befuddled as they tried to reconcile a highlight of a 6-5, 210 pound monster of a man flinging his stick at skaters instead of using his body to separate people from the puck, or the number of times he was caught out of position and looking like this was the first time he had ever been on ice skates. 

Grades

Author Grade: C
Banter Consensus: C-

Final Evaluation

The 2024-25 Rangers may best be described as a talented team that was plagued by inconsistent play and long stretches of ineffectiveness. No single player better embodies that description than K’Andre Miller. 

Miller is unquestionably physically gifted. If you could design a player in a lab he would have Miller’s combination of size, speed, and physical prowess. Unfortunately, the same could be said about Julien Gauthier and—like Gauthier—right now Miller has not found a way to translate those physical tools into performance. 

The Rangers and Miller are now at a crossroads. Five years into his career, Miller is an RFA with arbitration rights and there are a bunch of options on the table:

• The Rangers and Miller could agree on a long-term deal (AFP projects him at 6 years and around $6 million AAV)
• The Rangers and Miller could agree on a short-term bridge deal (AFP projects him at 1 year $4.65 million AAV)
• The Rangers could take Miller to arbitration 
• The Rangers could trade Miller’s RFA rights
• Another team could sign Miller to an offer sheet

If you had asked me back in October which way I thought this would go, I would have said the Rangers would absolutely sign Miller to a long-term deal. Now? Damned if I have any clue which of these things is going to happen. Literally none of these possible outcomes would surprise me. 

The Rangers could gamble on the fact that Mike Sullivan and his coaching staff will finally get through to Miller in a way that none of the disastrous defensive assistants the organization has employed since Miller’s debut could. They could also be gun-shy after giving Lafrenière a long-term deal only to watch him pull an Andy Dufresne and up and vanish like a fart in the wind and decide to trade Miller so that they can allocate his money elsewhere. Another team could come in and decide they want to gamble on Miller’s upside and sign him to an offer sheet. The best-case scenario for me is a short-term deal, but Miller’s agent (who happens to also represent Barclay Goodrow) has made it known that he intends to do the Rangers no favors. That said, Miller’s play this year did his agent no favors by removing a great deal of his leverage. 

If Miller is back next year then, for the love of God, let’s hope that Sullivan is smarter than his predecessors and puts him in the best position to succeed, that means with Adam Fox on the first pair.