The trade deadline has past and we are in the throws of the second phase of the rebuild.

There were a couple of minor league trade shuffles leading up to this weekend and as expected the big moves have been made. Mats Zuccarello has gone to Dallas for two early draft picks. Kevin Hayes has gone to Winnipeg for a draft pick (4th round in 2022(!) with some a condition Winni wins the Cup this year) and forward Brendan Lemieux (22 years old, some ok stats). Adam McQuaid has been sent to Columbus for 4th and 7th round draft picks.

So the obvious take from this: management is looking ahead 2-3 seasons for things to come together. For some reason, they didn’t think Hayes and Zucc are part of that team which has to be mostly cap space (all three players contracts were ending this season). They both wanted long term contracts and were told no and they would have gotten big raises, Hayes especially. Odds of them coming back to the team just got much smaller. Zucc is 32 I think so I assume they think the clock is ticking on him. Hayes is 26 and is probably about to hit his prime so not keeping him seems crazy. I don’t think McQuaid got a fair shake this season since trading for him in September. Wasted opportunity, Lord knows we need some muscle out there and he’s at least got that going for him (he’s 31 so I guess management doesn’t believe in him either…he’s just under $3 million at the moment).

The other take away is, if you are over 30 and not an absolute all-star of epic proportions, you aren’t going to get resigned. Management is building a young team that they expect to mature in 3 seasons or so. They’ll work with these rookies to see who takes off and when they have a homegrown stable set, a stupid amount of money will be dropped (the caps space is being built for this now) on other franchise players to fill in the gaps.

Hank has 2 more seasons left. He’ll be 38 and a salary of just over $8 million. They have a kid named Igor (iirc) who is more of a brick wall than a human being in the KHL (iirc) so they see him as the golden goalie. This kids stats are currently unreal and if he makes a successful transition to the NHL, it’ll be the second coming of the 2014 Rangers. Alexander Georgiev is I think the stop-gap solution for the next few years, he’ll play a lot more to make up for Hank starting to fade (it’s noticeable, he’s not reacting as fast). And who knows, Georgiev could be a monster soon too which gives the team a lot of options.

That’s years away. I’m now convinced that Hank’s exit between the posts will be the signal of when these bold trade moves are expected to pay off. They are preparing for the next NY Ranger generation to start the moment the Henrik Lundkvist era ends.