Joe’s Reaction of the Week: Rotten to the Core

When I wrote a scathing review of the locker room around this time last year, I mentioned the following:

I am done with this group, if you haven't been able to tell. I am done with this core. I am done with a group of veterans and "leaders" who have been given every single opportunity to succeed and be kept together by the very general manager they hate, pitching a fit that there were consequences to their actions this summer and now banding together to talk about how much they don't like being pushed. The Rangers of those pre-Jagr years of no playoffs were looked at as a country club organization. This group of players appear to want that outcome as well.

In the roughly 14 months that have passed between that article and this one, very little has changed.

And, is it any wonder?

On Monday, during Olympic team photos, Vincent Trocheck—a "leader" in the New York Rangers locker room—thought it would be cute to pretend he was already part of the Minnesota Wild and join their team photo. The Wild and national media thought it was cute.

I think it's a major part of the reason why the Rangers are where they are.

On the podcast this week I had a pretty visceral reaction to this moment. That Trocheck feels comfortable enough to joke about this tells me all I need to know about what his "leadership" in the room looks like. Don't get me started on the fact that Trocheck, J.T. Miller, Mike Sullivan, and Chris Drury get to fight for a gold medal despite the disgraceful performance of the team they're paid to play/coach/manage for. That in the face of that, Trocheck felt it was OK to do this, even with Chris Drury there? I'm glad he thinks this is cute and funny.

And honestly, why shouldn't he? Trocheck—much like Panarin, and likely Braden Schneider and a few others—have a golden parachute they're going to get to deploy by the end of the year.