Does the Adam Fox Injury Require the Rangers To Make a Trade?

In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, the New York Rangers lost a brutal game to the Tampa Bay Lightning on home ice. Arguably a greater loss than the game itself was the injury to Adam Fox which places him on LTIR for four-to-six weeks, if not longer. Joe and Eric have talked about Fox’s importance to the New York Rangers at length on the podcast, we’ve written plenty of stories about it, there’s evidence in the numbers, and there’s evidence from the eye test—Adam Fox, along with Igor Shesterkin is this New York Rangers team. Without him in the picture, do they stand a chance? 

You always hate to see a player go down with injury, especially when it’s one of your most important players. With it, however, always comes a window of opportunity for someone else further down the depth charts. Whether it’s a roster player or someone in the AHL, it’s always a 'next man up' mentality. With Fox out of the picture, one of—if not both—of Braden Schneider and Scott Morrow will get a look as the team needs someone on the back end to step up and play important minutes.  

Scott Morrow is the younger, more exciting option. He’s an offensively gifted defenseman who can certainly get the chance to flourish on a pair with a defensively responsible veteran like Vladislav Gavrikov. Part of the reason Morrow didn’t make the team out of camp to begin with is because the Rangers wanted him to get top pair minutes in Hartford. Well, now that there’s a chance for him to get that kind of ice time in the NHL, perhaps it’s the perfect opportunity to give him an extended look. 

While Morrow might be an option with Fox out of the lineup, there really is no reason that Braden Schneider shouldn’t be the one that moves up into the top four. After all, head coach Mike Sullivan does indeed consider him a top four defenseman, even though he does everything but actually play in the top four.

“If we were to rank our defenseman top to bottom, we believe that Schneids is amongst the top four,” Sullivan said. “But that doesn’t mean he has to play in the top four.”

Let’s not forget, when all is on the line, the coaching staff continues to turn to Matthew Robertson, and not Scott Morrow, ahead of Braden Schneider. 

As of the Monday, Dec. 1 practice, with Fox out of the picture it does appear that Braden Schneider will get the first look on that top pair with Gavrikov. This allows for Matthew Robertson to move back to the left with Scott Morrow on his right.  

As a short-term solution, this is fine—sort of. Matthew Robertson has been much better than I feel many folks expected. He still has some defensive lapses now and then that raise a fair amount of concern, but those are indeed the growing pains that come with younger players. Now the problem is if you pair Robertson with an even younger, offensive-minded defenseman who is surely going to have defensive lapses of his own, that could be a problem.