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…
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