MTPS: How to Get Out of the Murky Middle with a Fix for the Top Six

Well, this is certainly not going according to plan. At least not my plan.

In our Blueshirt Banter Roundtable, I predicted that the New York Rangers would not only win the Metropolitan Division but would, for the third time in five years, compete in the Eastern Conference Final. Now, to be fair, the NHL's Eastern Conference is a hot mess with just 11 points separating the best record from the worst. Every team has at least one—if not more—fatal flaws that could sabotage their seasons in a heartbeat. It is the hockey equivalent of Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards: just a slog where it feels like there are no winners, just survivors.

Within this melee the Rangers, along with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils, are probably in the worst place to be: The Murky Middle.

The Murky Middle—as depicted in the video link above—is where there are groups pressing against you from all sides, you're trying as much to avoid being crushed as you are from being stabbed, and really all you're looking for is a way out of the hellscape in which you currently you find yourself. The Montreal Canadiens and Florida Panthers are kinda in the same space, but both are in very different places. Florida has won two straight championships and while their core is aging, they also have the ability to sit back and say "oh well" and their fan base will have to accept that. Montreal is a young team that really wanted to build off of last year's fun and make a sustained run. While that hasn't happened, they're a young team, their core is locked up, and their future is bright.

For the Rangers, Leafs, and Devils, well, shit ain't so rosy. These are veteran teams that are good enough to make the playoffs, probably not good enough to win the Stanley Cup, but also too old and handcuffed by contracts to be content to say "wait until next year." Of the three, the Rangers are probably the best positioned to make any real noise in the playoffs because of their Igor Advantage. (Yes friends, it is OK to have an Igor Advantage. You do not have to apologize for having an elite goaltender put your team on his back and carry you to wins you should not get any more than a team with great scorers and questionable goaltending needs to apologize for winning games 7-6 instead of 2-0.)

Even with the Igor of it all, the Rangers need to pick a lane. They're either in it to win it or, as Joe mentioned on the Carl Hagelin Edition of the podcast, maybe they should look to reset their timeline by looking at trades. The fact is that there is very little in the last thirty years to suggest that the Rangers will do the latter. It's not part of their established DNA, so we should assume they're going to do the former. That doesn't mean mortgaging futures for quick fixes and rentals, there is a middle ground here and my hope—as should be your hope—is that is where Drury lands.

There have been rumors suggesting that the Rangers may be a team in the mix for Quinn Hughes. While I will be the first to point out that with the right camera, enough cheap tequila, and an morally-flexible goat any player is attainable, I find it unlikely that the Rangers land on a deal for Hughes. The price would have to be so high that it would make the Rangers better in one area and so much worse in others. Also, is that really what the team needs to get out of their current situation? Don't get me wrong, Quinn Hughes is an elite defenseman (just like Adam Fox) and having two Adam Fox-level talents is better than having one. But, is that the biggest need right now?

To me, it's scoring up front. Just as I have said that I cannot take the Carolina Hurricanes seriously if they're going to insist on running Frederik Andersen out there as a starting goalie, I cannot take the Rangers seriously with Conor Sheary or Jonny Brodzinski in the top six. Maybe the solution is to just bring up Gabe Perreault, but I'm also completely OK with the Rangers saying to Gabe Perreault, "stay there, improve, don't be a hero." That decision, though, forces us to look outside the organization. Extensions have taken lots of potential rentals (or rentals with an option to buy) off the table and the success of teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings probably means that players like Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, and Dylan Larkin are not currently available.

So, who might be?

Stop. Just stop. I know what you're thinking and I'm telling you here and now to knock it off. None of the players listed here are realistically available. I know what I said about the goat and the tequila and the camera, but the Buffalo Sabres have made it very clear that you would need several goats and maybe even an ambidextrous chimpanzee to get them to consider making a substantial trade with the New York Rangers.

Ultimately, I think people are right in suggesting the Rangers will make a trade with the Canucks, I just don't think it will be for Quinn Hughes. If the Canucks aren't hockey's most dysfunctional team, they're certainly in a close second. Their team president, Jim Rutherford, sticks his foot so far down his mouth every time he speaks that professional contortionists marvel at his flexibility. The team is a train wreck on the ice and really the only positive coming out of their program right now is that Elias Pettersson seems happier with J.T. Miller gone. That's nice.

Like the Rangers, they're too old to be a "wait 'til next year" team, but unlike the Rangers, they're not good enough to have any hope for this year. Their leading goal scorer is 30-year-old Keifer Sherwood with 12. His career high is 19. Due to injuries and ineffectiveness, their top line center right now is David Kampf, who joined the team after having his contract terminated by Toronto because he didn't want to play in the AHL any more. They're more than a trainwreck. They're a trainwreck if one of the trains was carrying barrels of poo to a waste treatment center for processing and the other train was carrying toxic waste and they collided over a cesspool and then the tanker plane that flew by to drop fire suppressant instead dropped gasoline and more poo.

All of this is a long winded way of saying that there's talent on that roster that may not be living up to its potential because of the situation, not because they suck.