They weren’t going to pay either player on long-term deals to prevent them from hitting the free-agent market, so each was traded prior to the deadline.
No, this is not a reference to Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes, sent to Dallas and Winnipeg, respectively, over this past weekend, but rather to Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller, both of whom were traded to the Lightning minutes before the 2018 deadline and who returned to the Garden on Wednesday to help their new team defeat the Rangers 4-3 in overtime.
In the 12-plus months since the Rangers declared their intention to tear down and rebuild the existing structure that had grown old and insufficient, management has made seven trades involving Nick Holden, Michael Grabner, Rick Nash, McDonagh, Miller, Zuccarello, Hayes and Adam McQuaid.
None of the other six comes close to the significance of the deal with Tampa Bay in which the club traded its captain plus a hard-edged, top-nine winger once considered a building block for a bundle of futures and draft picks (and cap-balancer Vlad Namestnikov).
This isn’t about who won and lost the deal. There was never a debate about the quality the Lightning, first-overall and an emerging prohibitive favorite to win the Cup, were able to add last Feb. 26. Tampa Bay was going for it, much the way the Rangers did every year from 2012-17, and the Lightning acquired a pair of players who bolstered an already powerful roster.
The Lightning were always going to get a win out of the deal.
The question from the Lightning perspective was a two-parter: a) Could these latest emigres from Broadway, who would join fellow former Blueshirt snowbirds Ryan Callahan, Dan Girardi and Anton Stralman, take the Lightning to the promised land; and, b) Would the Lightning be able to sign the players to long-term contracts?
The answer to Part A is, not yet, Tampa Bay having lost last year’s conference final to the eventual Cup-winning Capitals in seven games, shut out in each of the final two matches after taking a 3-2 series lead.
The answer to Part B is, yes. The Lightning signed McDonagh, who was on track for 2019 free agency, to a six-year extension worth $6.75 million per that kicks in next season. The team also signed Miller, who had one year of unrestricted free agency ahead before he would have been able to hit the market this July 1, to a five-year deal worth $5.25 million per.
McDonagh’s game had slipped over his final few seasons in New York as he was overburdened by the captaincy he was awarded at the start of the 2014-15 season; by a series of injuries; and by a series of insufficient first-pair right-side partners that featured Girardi and Holden. He has appeared revived as a second-pair stalwart behind Victor Hedman. Miller, who started last year on the unit with Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, has gotten mostly third-line minutes this season while continuing to be largely the same erratic player he’d been in New York.
The Rangers’ side is much more difficult to assess a year out, but it is fair to say that from this perch at this time, the return seems rather insubstantial for two players who should have been extremely desirable commodities on the market — either at the deadline or at last year’s draft.
The 2018 first-round pick was used on righty defenseman Nils Lundkvist, who has had a nice developmental year in Sweden. The 2019 second-round pick will become a first-rounder (and thus, 31st overall) if the Lightning do win the Cup. Namestnikov has not been a factor. Brett Howden, a 2016 late first-rounder, has had a credible rookie season as a 20-year-old, seeming to confirm projections that he could become a high-end third-line center.
But defenseman Libor Hajek, Tampa Bay’s 2016 second-rounder chosen at 37th overall, was the player the Rangers targeted. He is the player they had to have in the deal. He is also the player that then-GM Steve Yzerman would not trade unless Miller, who scored a power-play goal in the first period Wednesday, was included the offer.
The Rangers believed Hajek would contend for a blue-line spot this year and so did his junior coach, John Paddock. Instead, Hajek has struggled through an extremely difficult first pro season with the AHL Wolf Pack. Clearly, this is not what the Blueshirts need(ed).
So we wait. We wait to monitor Howden’s progress. We wait on Lundkvist. We wait to see whether the Rangers can get another first-rounder out of the trade. Most of all, we wait on Hajek. Because if Hajek does not become the big-time defenseman the Rangers believed, it will not be that Tampa Bay won the Trade of ’18, but that the Rangers lost it.
Source: Read Full Article