In case you missed it, the big news yesterday is that Lias Andersson has formally requested a trade from the Rangers. The news broke yesterday, but there’s a solid chance this request came before the news broke. As per usual, I have some thoughts.
1. Let’s start with the beginning, the trade of Derek Stepan to Arizona for the 7th overall pick and Tony DeAngelo. The Rangers wanted Elias Pettersson, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. The rumor is they tried to swap the 7th+ with Vancouver, but they didn’t bite. Stuck with the 7th overall pick in a six player draft, they went with the guy who was “NHL ready” but who had a ceiling of a middle-six forward. He was supposed to be the 3C that year, but clearly that didn’t happen. The Rangers then released the letter and started the rebuild.
2. Regarding who else they could have taken in the draft – it’s tough to compare top-ten misses to picks 20-30, so the Filip Chytil comparison is a little off. Casey Middlestadt is in the AHL now, and he was the pick after Andersson. You don’t get to bigger names until pick 14 or 15, which, if we are being honest with ourselves, aren’t on the table when you pick top-seven. Hindsight is 20/20, but this is something that should be taken into account.
3. So after Lias doesn’t play the 2017-2018 season with the Rangers, he gets the 7 games at the end of the year, doesn’t look overly good, and spends the following season split between Hartford and the Rangers to underwhelming results. The offense clearly wasn’t there, but the defensive aspect of the game looked promising.
4. So we go to this preseason, and Lias has worked tirelessly in the offseason on his game. He’s faster, and it shows in the preseason. He outperforms Chytil and Brett Howden, but is rewarded with a fourth line role and barely getting seven minutes a night. His “pace” is called into question. He is then demoted to the AHL, and sees Brendan Smith, Greg McKegg, and Micheal Haley get more minutes, sometimes in a third line role, over him. That said, Andersson didn’t exactly play well in Hartford, so it’s not like he earned a call up he never got. A change of scenery is needed.
5. Looking at this from Andersson’s point of view, his reaction is similar to Vitali Kravtsov’s. I’d be upset too if a fighter, a journeyman, and a defenseman were getting more minutes than me, a top pick and supposedly part of the future. Yes, there’s a performance aspect to this and Lias didn’t meet the coaching staff’s expectations, but at what point do you just play him 10 minutes a night for 20-25 games with actual NHL players just to see what he has?
6. There is no guarantee that Lias would have or will be an NHL player. The word bust is a bit premature for a 20 year old, but that’s a possibility as well. The thinking, from my point of view, is that he wasn’t given a clear shot. The counter point is did he earn it? And my response: If you drafted him 7th overall, you see what he has in a real NHL situation, especially in a rebuilding year. It’s not a fool proof response and certainly isn’t the be-all-end-all, but that’s just my opinion.
7. This, at the very best, is poor asset management from the Rangers. From the Stepan trade all the way through yesterday’s news, the Rangers have butchered this. It’s not the first time they’ve done this either, with players like Ryan Graves and Jonathan Marchessault never getting real chances with the Rangers. Lias may not turn out like them, but the point is you never know unless you give them a shot.
8. For Andersson, we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. For all we know there’s an attitude problem, although that hasn’t been reported. The only thing we’ve heard is that his NHL pace is lacking. He makes one play and then stops. That’s a legitimate criticism and something we’ve seen. It’s something Edmonton called out too, which is why they didn’t do a Andersson/Jesse Puljujarvi swap. They wanted more.
9. No matter which way you slice it, this is an ugly situation for the Rangers that was managed poorly. Selling themselves on Andersson’s NHL readiness was a mistake in 2017, and it’s biting them now. If he was the “first” pick of the rebuild, then we’d be very scared of what else is to come. Luckily they hit on Chytil and got Kaapo Kakko, along with the rest of the 2018 and 2019 drafts. Their best bet to salvage this is to trade for another change of scenery guy. Puljujarvi if the price is right is something I would still keep my eyes on.
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