mcilrath

When the Rangers exit the playoffs (and it may be tonight but it will certainly be before June) they will have a lot of issues to confront. The lack of accountability, the holes on the roster, the coaching staff’s inability to address the obvious issues plaguing the team all season… the list is pretty extensive. Yet despite all of this it’s easy to forget the core of the roster is legitimately solid. Changes are needed, but not on a ‘let’s blow it all up’ level. The biggest danger to the Rangers however may be the number of teams in similar positions who may be vying for the same talent this summer.

Whether you believe the Detroit Red Wings should entice Pavel Datsyuk to stay or not (they shouldn’t) the Wings have managed to stay competitive and like the Rangers have a core of prospects now in place that should allow the club to return to contender status if Detroit have a good summer. The Wings can accelerate a return to contention if they are able to steal Steven Stamkos in the summer. The Wings coped with losing Mike Babcock pretty well as well as dealing with the steady decline of important veterans.

Led by Dylan Larkin the Wings have a group of young, talented forwards that have been brought into the fold over the past two seasons. Larkin, Andreas Athanasiou, and more recently, the highly touted Anthony Mantha have started to establish themselves along with the slightly older, but still young Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar and Riley Sheahan. The Wings then are in a similar position to the Rangers in that the core is in place, but they need to add to it.

The Wings aren’t the only team that are in a similar spot as the Rangers. The Boston Bruins have a good core, and like the Rangers they have the goaltending in place to make a quick jump back to the front of the mediocre East. Again, with some savy moves.

We could go through the entire East and identify a handful of clubs that, with some careful attention to their rosters, could make big jumps forward and this is the danger for the Rangers this summer. The Rangers aren’t alone. The summer promises to be an active, interesting one with several Eastern teams jockeying for position. There’s a lot of mediocrity but there’s also a lot of teams that are not far off.

The Rangers will be shopping in the same aisles as many other teams this offseason, so Jeff Gorton will need to be smart and proactive if the Rangers are going to improve on what has been a terribly underwhelming season.

Should the Rangers move Rick Nash and go for Steven Stamkos? Should (no, make that can) they move Dan Girardi and Marc Staal and rebuild their blueline? The Rangers have some serious questions that need addressing but the biggest threat to their ability to successfully address the roster won’t be themselves (or their notoriously bad free agency decision making) but it will be several other deep pocketed, big market clubs poised for the same kind of summer.

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