Should the Rangers Drop the “Rebuilding” Act To Pursue Top Line Players?

Thirteen players, fourteen if Marc Staal re-signs, are younger than thirty years old. Ten players, eleven if Marc Staal re-signs, are under the age of twenty-seven. Eight Players, nine if Staal re-signs, are under the age of twenty-five, where am I going with this you may ask? Well a team that is trying to go through a “rebuilding” stage is a team that wants to build from within the organization, and allow their rookies time to grow. But why do the Rangers have to go through a rebuilding stage if half of the team is younger than 27? That’s an extremely young team. The Rangers defense will most likely look like this at the season’s start: MDZ (20), Eminger (26), Girardi (26), Rozsival (31), Mcdonagh (21), and guessing that he resigns, Staal (23). Take a look at that defense. Five of the six players are younger than 27 years old. Half of the players are 23 or younger. That seems to be a pretty young defense. On offense eight of the eleven players, so far, are younger than thirty. Six of our offensive players are 26 or younger. That seems like a pretty offense to me. So what I am trying to say is that this team is, in a way, already rebuilding. I’m going to breakdown the two plans the Rangers can go with, before the start of the 2010-2011 season. The plans are simply: Rebuild, don’t rebuild. Here it goes…

Rebuild

             As I said before, when a team rebuilds they get young through their organization. The Rangers do indeed have up and coming superstars in their minor leagues, but nothing to really go extremely crazy about. What I’m saying is there are no Ovechkin’s or Crosby’s in our minor league system. If you’re looking for our top prospects, you will find names such as Evgeny Grachev, Derek Stepan, Dale Weise, Mats Zuccarello Aasen, and Dane Byers (who I believe is a RFA). On defense you will find Mark Saur (who is another RFA), and Ryan Mcdoangh (who will probably play in the NHL next season). If you look closely our resources are scarce. We have four good young forward sin the minors, not including Byers because he hasn’t signed yet, and on defense we have pretty much nothing, Saur hasn’t signed yet either and Mcdonagh is going to play in the NHL. So why rebuild when you have barley anything to rebuild with? Also, with the coach being John Torterella rebuilding will not work.

Don’t Rebuild

                  What the Rangers will have to do if they don’t rebuild is, bring in top notch players to play with Gaborik, and do what the Sharks did by bringing in players to stack their first couple of lines. This will be hard to because of the small amount of spots open, but I didn’t say we had to go out and sign Free Agents. It could start with a trade. It’s rumored that the Rangers may try to trade away Dubinsky and Gilroy, in return for a top line center to play with Gaborik. If this happens, than the Rangers go out in free agency, and try to ink a top line winger to play with Gaborik, thus making an unstoppable first line (ex. Marleau, Thorton, Heatley). Next step is to make a second line that is sort of a counter attack to their first line. It doesn’t have to be anything special, the Rangers can simply sign a guy like Lee Stempniak, Bill Guerin, or Paul Kariya and find players to play with them (Prospal and Avery would do fine on a line with one of them). Next is a decent third line (ex. The Penguin line that consists of Jordon Staal, Matt Cooke, and someone else that I forgot about). A perfect mimic line of that would be Cally, Christenson, and Prust. Than the fourth line would consist of Boogaard, Anisimov, and either Brian Boyle or a minor leaguer (MZA would be a perfect fit with AA). That’s what it would look like if the Rangers went with my plan not to rebuild, and bring in players that can compliment Gaby.

                I’m sure a lot of you who read this will completely disagree with me. This was my opinion on what the Rangers can and should do, and I would love to hear what you, the readers, have to say about my article and what the Rangers should do heading into the 2010-11 season. Thanks for the read, hope you enjoyed. Please leave any opinions in the response section below.

(Extra info, I did not forget about Drury or Redden, when i say unneeded players, those are them. They would fit in the plan as freeing the cap space. Also sorry about the pic, the website was having difficulties so i had to load a pic taken at a Ranger game i went to last season.)