The New York Rangers‘ offseason has officially begun, and it started with a major move. The longest tenured player on the team, Chris Kreider, was traded to the Anaheim Ducks in a deal that saw the Rangers gain $6.5 million in much-needed cap space to make other moves this offseason to improve the team for next season. There will likely be other players traded in the coming weeks, and two names that have been brought up the most are K’Andre Miller and Alexis Lafreniere. While both of these players are coming off down seasons, they could still bring back some good assets in any potential trade.
The issue with trading either of these players is that general manager (GM) Chris Drury needs to have a plan in place to replace these players because they are important parts of the lineup. He made this mistake once before, back at the start of time as GM, when he traded Pavel Buchnevich to the St. Louis Blues and didn’t have a player immediately ready to take his spot in the lineup. If Drury does intend to move Miller or Lafreniere, he needs to make sure that he knows what players are coming in to replace them, because if he doesn’t, this team will get a lot worse before it gets better.
A Look Back at the Buchnevich Trade
To start, we are going to go back to where it all started, the 2021 offseason. The Rangers were coming off the COVID-shortened season and had missed the playoffs. Just before the season ended, GM Jeff Gorton and President of Hockey Operations, John Davidson, were both let go, and Drury took over both of those roles. Heading into that offseason, there were rumors that the Rangers were heavily interested in getting Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres and that maybe they would be the team to get him, as they had serious talks with the Sabres. They were going to need to create cap space and room on their roster to make a deal happen, and the one player that started having his name put out in rumors was Buchnevich. He was coming off the best season of his career at the time, with 20 goals and 48 points in 54 games played. He was a restricted free agent (RFA) that summer, and it seemed that both sides could not agree to a new deal. Eventually, a deal was made that still has an impact on the team today.
Buchnevich was traded to the Blues in exchange for Sammy Blais and a 2022 second-round pick. Blais played a fourth-line role for the Rangers and played in 54 games across two seasons with the team without scoring a goal. He was moved back to the Blues in 2023 in the trade that brought Vladimir Tarasenko to New York. For Buchnevich, he left New York and hasn’t looked back, and has become an elite player for the Blues, scoring at least 20 goals in each of his first four seasons with the team. For the Rangers, they have yet to find a permanent replacement for him on their right wing, and there has been a revolving door of players who have gotten to play in that spot, but none of them have stuck quite like Buchnevich did alongside Kreider and Mika Zibanejad. Drury’s first big trade turned out to be his worst, and he is still paying the price, which is why he needs to learn from his mistakes.
Trading Miller Would Leave the Left Side of the Defense Barren
After the trading of Kreider, the next name that seems to be the most likely to move is Miller. He is an RFA this summer, and it seems that Drury is hesitant to pay this player for the long term. A short-term deal is also risky because it seems that Miller wants to be able to cash in when he becomes an unrestricted free agent in two seasons, and they could lose him for nothing. With that in mind, added to the fact that Drury needs to improve this defensive core, it seems that now is the time for both parties to go their separate ways and a trade is the best way to make that happen, so the Rangers can at least get some value back for this player and not lose him in two years.
An issue that Drury is going to have to overcome is finding a suitable replacement for Miller in the top four. While Miller hasn’t been great and hasn’t shown much improvement over the years, he has still played a big role on the team. If they move him in a deal and don’t get a defenseman back, the only two players that are on the roster and under contract that are left-handed defensemen are Carson Soucy and Urho Vaakaninen. Neither of those players should ever see top-four minutes if the Rangers are serious about making it back to the playoffs next season.
Free agency doesn’t have many options, but the one name they have been linked to is Vladislav Gavrikov. He has been a solid top-four player for the Los Angeles Kings and is the top name on the defensive free agent market. The issue with him is going to be his contract, as he will likely get way too much for way too long. If the Rangers get him, they will regret that deal in a few seasons, but if they don’t, they could be out of luck, and if Miller is gone, the defense looks a whole lot weaker.
Selling Low on Lafreniere Could Be a Mistake
Another player whose name keeps coming up in trade rumors is Lafreniere. While he isn’t an RFA like Buchnevich was, he is a young winger who hasn’t been given a true chance to show what he can do, just like Buchnevich was before he was traded. Yes, Lafreniere has gotten to play with Artemi Panarin for the majority of the past two seasons, but he has never been seen as “the guy” in New York like he was expected to be, and he couldn’t even crack the top power-play unit this season when it was struggling. He has never been given that extended period of time to show what he is capable of, and now that Kreider is no longer in front of him on the depth chart, he can move back over to his natural side on the left wing and can easily take Kreider’s spot on the top power-play unit. He was drafted first overall for a reason, and now is the time to give him that opportunity to shine rather than trading him away for pennies on the dollar.
Trading him now would mean that Drury would be selling low on him, coming off the down offensive season he had. He also just signed a seven-year extension back in October, so teams may like that he is locked up long-term, but for Drury, he needs to realize that he can’t keep moving these younger players that haven’t worked out because he is going to need a player like Lafreniere to be here and lead the new group of players coming up when the older players on the team now start to fizzle out. Trading him this offseason could be the equivalent of the Buchnevich trade because you wouldn’t be getting back fair value in a trade, and there would be a hole in the lineup once again, and they don’t have a player who can step into that role in the top six. If Drury is smart, he will keep Lafreniere for this season to see what he has to offer under a new head coach, and maybe this time, he will finally get his chance to be seen as a top player on the Rangers.
Drury has many decisions still to make this offseason. Moving Kreider was just step one in the plan to retool this team for next season. He needs to be smart about the rest of the moves he is making because another trade like the Buchnevich one could set the franchise back years, and that is a trade he still hasn’t recovered from. If he does intend on moving Miller and Lafreniere, he better know for sure who is coming in to take their spots, because if he doesn’t, next season could be just as bad as this one.
