Searching free agency for a speed upgrade for the Rangers

In a utopian hockey world, the Rangers’ roster would be full of 6-foot-6 tanks that all skated like the wind, possessed unreal skills, and paid equal attention to both ends of the ice.

But in reality, NHL teams can really only afford to focus on a couple of attributes in building their rosters. The best franchises have identified those characteristics within their existing talent pool and continued to add and improve over the years. The Kings, Ducks and Panthers are teams of physical giants that will grind you into a pulp, while the Lightning, Penguins and Stars have focused on speed and skill.

The 2015-2016 Rangers lost their identity. They maintained the same all-world goalie that was key to the John Tortorella-era Blueshirts who were airtight defensively, and the recent Alain Vigneault edition that became a lightning quick counterattack team. But this year’s group never quite figured out what it was beyond having that super-safety net in goal.

I wrote last week about how losing Carl Hagelin and Martin St. Louis stripped New York of its top speed down the wings, which left this squad incomplete. But many of the pieces to that speedy transition team are still in place and if you’re in favor of a retool as I am, this is the easiest path to rectifying the ailing roster on a budget.

Why? Well, the secret of speed up front is that it masks inept puck moving from the blueliners. Think about it – prior to Yandle, who have the Rangers had in recent history that you would consider even an adequate puck mover from the back-end? It’s not like Girardi and Staal just started struggling in that area this season. Ryan McDonagh and Anton Stralman are exceptions, but the laundry list of failed experiments includes Dan Boyle, Matt Gilroy, Michael Del Zotto, Roman Hamrlik, and so on.

But despite that lack of strong outlet passers, the Rangers managed to evolve into a lethal speed team. That’s because they were so loaded with wheels up front that those defensemen didn’t have to put pinpoint passes on the fowards’ sticks. Having speed allows players to dump and chase effectively – just slug it into the attack zone and let the horses gallop after it. Speed also allows the forwards to get the puck and go, carrying it out of their own end more easily. And there are other nifty ways to exit as we’ve seen time and again with the patented Hagelin alley-oop into the far corner down the rink.

Without the top speed New York has had in the past, the defense’s struggles to complete outlet passes accurately was exposed time and again. And whether the Rangers manage to keep Keith Yandle or not, they aren’t likely to be able to fix the blueline in one fell swoop this offseason – so keying in on speed is potentially a more viable alternative.

For recent evidence of how speed can transform a team, just look at Pittsburgh. Outside of Kris Letang, the Penguins are not rife with puck-movers. Derrick Pouliot may get there some day, but Pittsburgh was basically a one-man show out of its own end until the addition of Trevor Daley. He made an enormous difference, especially in conjunction with the slew of swift forwards that suddenly became mainstays in the Penguins’ lineup.

And that’s the key thing the Rangers hopefully observed from Pittsburgh – speed isn’t always expensive. Sure, Hagelin makes $4 million – but Bryan Rust and Conor Sheary were six-figure call-ups from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

So how can the Rangers emulate the Penguins?

Well, New York is poised to take its first step in the right direction in the coming days when the Blueshirts sign Russian prospect Pavel Buchnevich to his Entry-Level contract.

Next, my preference is for the team to clear cap space and obtain maximum return while moving on from Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Rick Nash. The target in a Nash trade should be a rising blueliner – supplemented by a young, cheap forward with speed. Moving those contracts would also enable the Blueshirts to to re-sign Yandle and make additional personnel changes.

There are some intriguing options available via free agency. Red Wings dynamo Darren Helm headlines the list and could be a very tempting quick-fix, but the price tag may be prohibitive. The same goes for Mikkel Boedker, Frans Nielsen and Jason Chimera, but there are cheaper options like Michael Grabner available, too. (Even if the Rangers don’t clear enough cap space to do any real tinkering, they should be handing out PTOs to one-dimensional speedsters in September like candy).

Right now, the Blueshirts are somewhere in limbo – too good to rebuild and not good enough to contend. But the front office should recognize the team’s strengths and the realities of the marketplace and retool around speed.