SEEING RED

BY MIKE RIFKIN

Rangers General Manager Chris Drury has a task in front of him this summer, he has to make the team competitive, also while restocking the farm system. The good news for Drury is he can do a bit of both as he has almost 27 million dollars in cap space along with 11 picks. He’ll have multiple picks in the first (2), third (4) and sixth (2) rounds of the draft. 

Early in the season the Rangers had a problem scoring goals, and it got harder after they traded Artemi Panarin to the Kings. For the season the Rangers averaged 2.87 goals per game. Chris Drury needs to take a swing this summer, and it has to hit. So far the big Drury swing was a miss, and no I’m not talking about the JT Miller trade, it’s when Drury didn’t make a deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins for Jake Guentzel. Reports surfaced that the Penguins wanted Kappo Kakko and Brennan Othmann from the Rangers in exchange for Guentzel. Drury didn’t make the deal and allowed Guentzel to go to Carolina, who has since moved him to Tampa. Guentzel is still a guy the Rangers could use, and with Kakko and Othmann out of the organization it looks even worse. 

Usually the Rangers would be aggressive in free agency, but this year’s group which was going to be filled with an abundance of talent has gone by the wayside. So instead of putting a lot of emphasis on a player like Alex Tuch, the Rangers can use some of their draft capital to swing a trade. The team they should be monitoring is the Detroit Red Wings, who just saw their captain Dylan Larkin request a trade. Now, Larkin, who did win an Olympic Gold Medal with Team USA, coached by Rangers coach Mike Sullivan would be a nice add, that’s not who the Rangers should inquire about. The Rangers should inquire about Alex DeBrincat, who scored 41 goals and had 85 points in 82 games. In fact DeBrincat has missed scoring 20 goals only one time in his career, and that was the Covid shortened 2019-2020 season. DeBrincat has one year left at 7.875 Million dollars. So the Rangers can eat the money, and potentially sign DeBrincat to an extension. DeBrincat will be 29 in December so he fits the timeline for the Rangers, and depending on what Steve Yzerman wants to do, this is a swing Chris Drury really should look into.