The New York Rangers are in a tailspin lately, and despite being way better in the standings, the Toronto Maple Leafs could learn something from their old Original 6 foe.
Trading a 6-foot-3, 210 pound right-shot defenseman and former No. 2 overall draft pick seems like a crazy move, but that's exactly what the struggling New York Rangers did recently. If you were to evaluate the trade purely on what each team received, you would say that the Rangers lost because the team sent Jacob Trouba and Kaapo Kakko for multiple draft picks and two middle defensemen.
However, the Rangers are far from losers in these trades as they shed $10.4M in salary and were able to get assets in return for two players that weren't living up to expectations. Kakko obviously needed a fresh start after being healthy scratched recently, while Trouba has declined significantly and wasn't helping the team anymore.
After winning the Presidents Trophy last year, the Rangers sit 6th in the Metropolitan Division, despite having a former Vezina Trophy winning goalie in Igor Shesterkin and Norris Trophy defenseman in Adam Fox. Their forward depth is also pretty good highlighted by: Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Alexis Lafreniere.
Leafs Could Learn From the NY Rangers Ways
On paper the Rangers are a very good team and losing Kakko and Trouba theoretically makes the team worse, but now they have an absolute ton of cap space heading into the trade deadline, and the Leafs can learn from this.
The Leafs are first in their division, so they're not going to trade a pending UFA like John Tavares or Mitch Marner at this point, but they need to consider if some of the players they have are worth the money they're making.
The Leafs are currently capped out, but could gain cap space from trading the likes of Connor Timmins, David Kampf, Ryan Reaves, Max Domi or Oliver Eknan Larsson for up to $12 million in cap space. Obviously it's unlikely they move on from players they just signed this past summer. but its not impossible if they think they can do better.
If they really wanted to follow in the Rangers footsteps, they could consider a Morgan Rielly trade, though the Leafs longest serving player has a full no-movement clause and the Leafs would likely have to threaten him with waivers in order to trade him. Unlike Trouba, Rielly has not had such a significant droop off in play to the point where this would be a real threat, however.
The Rangers have made massive changes to their roster, which could spark a turn-around, but more likely what will turn them around will be re-investing the money they were poorly spending on trade deadline additions.
The Leafs have no way to improve their team unless they, like the Rangers, opt for major in-season roster surgery.