Good thing your not the GM lol. Cant go backwards in time. Kreiders here for the long haul create a team for next year. And strome doesn't drive his own offense your right but he has chemistry with panarin and strome is cerebral enough to play with him. Strome is just a temporary solution until 2 years from now 2021 offseason when they have 30M in cap space can try and go out and get a true number 1 or 2 center to go with zibanajad for 1 2 punch and have chytil play 3C. Also you absolutely don't get rid of lemieux hes the only sandpaper we have his grit and toughness at a cheap price is an asset and every team has that type of guy and needs that guy. The other option?? Haley?? Absolutely not. And fast is a swiss army knife if they could keep him to kill penalties move up and down the lineup when theres injuries and overall good defensive forward that's a great player to have.. you try and keep fast for less then 2.4m. He shouldn't be playing with panarin in top 6 but that's cause we dont have anyone else this year. Hes a really good 3rd 4th liner that is extremely valuable to this team that's why they didnt trade him. Cant have 4 lines of all stars gotta have those fasts and lemieuxs to fill out the roster on cheap cap hits

A 3rd of 4th liner is by defnition not really good or extremely valuable. This sort of thinking is what leads mediocre teams to be stuck in mediocrity. Having grit or sandpaper does in fact not do anything for you outside of measurable results - since any on ince impact would already be affected by that in any metric, even point totals. You don't need to replacehim with another rough guy for the sake of it, that's not how teams win.

The point is anyone can have chemistry with Panarin. You sell on Strome because he's not that good. The Ranger's aren't ready to compete, and you'll be disappointed again next year, because no team becomes good by holding on to the same dreadful veteran players that all of a sudden are having vintage seasons because Panarin drives offense. Sell them in order to surround Panarin with good players instead. Wink-wink nudge-nudge Kreider into re-signing instead, just make sure to get some kind of value from him.

This idea of prospects gradually becoming better is some sort of video-game based assumption or something that seems to creep itself into everyones minds. Players are usually great when they enter the league or shortly thereafter, they rarely have a steady progression towards their age 27-29 seasons and fall of at 30, it not only varies from that, but it doesn't even seem to be a smooth, general curve at all. Usually the ceiling holds for a while, but most players already peaked at 23. There is not much reason to believe Chytil will have some mentally satisfactory journey to finally becoming a 1st line C after 4-5 seasons in the league and more than that he's somehow more ready to play 3C a year from now rather than right now. I think he's probably an NHL player, but banking on some imaginary development curve is just baseless.

Stop making stupid signings. Teams like NYR shouldn't sign okay players for 4-5 million, and they definitely shouldn't sign Strome to any term. Even if trading Strome just meant that he wouldn't re-sign it'd be worth giving him away for free. The reason NYR even became bad was because they somehow credited guys like Staal, Stepan, Brassard etc. (who they luckily traded) for Lundqvist's peak. Losing Stralman, also at his peak, seems to be missed when analyzing why they fell off, but he was basically the one guy they should have kept. Thinking other mediocre players drive the team forward is a flawed way of viewing the league that will leave you in cap hell with a team bad enough to miss the playoffs and good enough to be the Minnesota Wild east and never get any actual talent back through the draft.

The best GM move the Rangers made in the last 4-5 years was trying to move for Pettersson in the draft. Besides the Zibanejad trade, and luckily the Fox and maybe DeAngelo deals, nothing else has even tried to help the team long term. Not even Panarin made sense for them, but at least he's philosophically a player you want to target at some point.