Joe's Reaction of the Week: The Rangers Aren't Anything
Drury’s accelerated bets without the superstar payoff have pushed the Rangers into the NHL’s dead zone: too old to grow, too thin to contend.
I've workshopped this idea before, but this weekend felt like a perfect time to really put the finishing touches on it.
As far as I can tell, NHL hockey teams fall into four core categories, and some teams will fall into the fringes of two of them, giving us a total of six categories.
Those are:
- True Stanley Cup Contenders
- Contenders (fringe)
- Playoff Bound
- Playoff Bubble (fringe)
- Not Much Hope
- Bottom Feeders
Now, I have another longstanding theory that if you factor in a series of variables (age, team composition, prospect pool, and asset pool among others), look at those in conjunction with where the team fits into the above categories, it will give you a really good idea of what decisions the team should make moving forward.
So where do we put the Rangers in all this? Well, category wise they're a 4 at best, and teetering on a 5. So, that's not a good start.
