Shortly after the buzzer sounded on Friday\u2019s NHL trade deadline, Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin made an appearance on ESPN.<\/p>\n
He was asked by reporter Emily Kaplan why it was so hard to pry away some of the top available centers, such as Vincent Trocheck of the New York Rangers, and offered a funny-but-telling response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought winning gold with Chris Drury would have gotten me a little bit of a discount,\u201d the GM of the U.S. men\u2019s Olympic team said, \u201cbut he wasn\u2019t in that mood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerin was chuckling as he said it, but many around the league likely nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n
The word for weeks has been that Drury, who serves as both Rangers president and GM, was driving a hard bargain for his most valuable trade chip and telling teams he wouldn\u2019t budge if they didn\u2019t meet his price. It was considered unreasonably high by multiple sources from interested parties, some of whom thought \u2014 or at least hoped \u2014 that Drury was posturing and would reduce his ask as the deadline approached.<\/p>\n
He did not.<\/p>\n
Drury stood his ground, and when the dust settled, Trocheck \u2014 who has three years remaining on his contract at a $5.625 million cap hit \u2014 was still a Ranger.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s both admirable and extremely risky. As one executive pointed out, caving in the final hours would have signaled to other GMs that Drury\u2019s word was flimsy. But by misjudging the market and setting a price no one was willing to meet, he may have backed himself into a corner.<\/p>\n
The Rangers had offers in hand<\/a>. The Minnesota Wild are believed to have put their No. 2 prospect, center Charlie Stramel, on the table, plus a likely future first-round pick and a possible third piece. The Boston Bruins, Carolina Hurricanes, Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins are among the others who showed interest and had intriguing assets to dangle, but none were prepared to give up the necessary pieces to get Drury to say yes. The primary requirement was a forward with top-six potential who had either reached the NHL already or was on the verge.<\/p>\n Rather than take whatever amounted to the best available offer, Drury is rolling the dice that he can do better at a later date.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not inconceivable. There was gridlock throughout the league at this deadline, with buyers hamstrung by CBA tweaks<\/a> that introduced a playoff salary cap and eliminated third-party brokers. Many sellers elected to wait for better conditions, which may be coming. The cap is set to jump from $95.5 million to $104 million on July 1 and will presumably provide teams with extra room to enter the bidding. There could also be a wider field of GMs seeking an impact addition who can change their fortunes heading into next season. Two more will be eligible to enter the conversation for Trocheck, whose 12-team no-trade list will drop to 10 once the 2026-27 calendar begins.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s also a chance more enticing center options will shift the market. The St. Louis Blues didn\u2019t move 26-year-old Robert Thomas at the deadline, either, and are expected to continue shopping him over the summer. He\u2019ll surely be ahead of Trocheck \u2014 who\u2019s viewed as a strong middle-six center but not a true No. 1 \u2014 in the pecking order. The Vancouver Canucks\u2019 Elias Pettersson, New Jersey Devils\u2019 Nico Hischier, Nashville Predators\u2019 Ryan O\u2019Reilly and even Toronto Maple Leafs\u2019 Auston Matthews could further crowd the picture.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also unlikely that Trocheck\u2019s value will improve from here. He\u2019s still riding the high from winning a gold medal in Milan, where he showcased the intangibles and versatility that made him such an appealing target, but he\u2019ll turn 33 in July. Between age and playing for a losing team that\u2019s been gutted of its skill, it\u2019s hard to imagine his production won\u2019t continue to suffer. And we haven\u2019t even mentioned the injury possibility. (Hopefully not, but all outcomes must be considered.)<\/p>\n Carrying Trocheck into next season feels like a non-starter if the Rangers are serious about rebuilding \u2014 excuse me, retooling \u2014 and getting younger. He\u2019d be a quality add for any contender, but this is a last-place team that has a long way to go to get back to that perch. More importantly, he\u2019s one of the very few assets they can use to attain the future play-drivers they so desperately need.<\/p>\n There\u2019s little chance Drury will be able to get more for the 5-foot-11, 187-pounder at next year\u2019s deadline, which leaves him at the mercy of whatever he can squeeze out of his GM counterparts this summer. Maybe Drury\u2019s gamble will pay off and there will be a bullish market around draft time, but there\u2019s understandable skepticism. Holding Trocheck may have been the right decision in a vacuum, but a shaky track record of asset management across five years at the helm has evaporated the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n The Rangers have said goodbye to 13 of the 22 players who appeared in games during their 2024 run to the Eastern Conference final, with little coming back to replace them. Less than two years later, they\u2019re the worst team in the conference with a future as bleak as any in the NHL<\/a>.<\/p>\n Drury has methodically dismantled that roster while receiving lackluster returns for many of the outgoing core pieces. That, coupled with a prospect pool that\u2019s barren after years of shipping away draft picks and botching development \u2014 the latest example being 2021 first-rounder Brennan Othmann<\/a>, who was traded to the Calgary Flames on Friday following a turbulent tenure \u2014 has left the organization in a similarly sorry state as that of the early-2000s Rangers.<\/p>\n All of those missteps intensified the pressure to maximize the return on Trocheck. Drury has promised fans \u2014 and ownership \u2014 a retool, not a rebuild, but all he has to show for it since his Jan. 16 letter<\/a> is a solid prospect in Liam Greentree<\/a> and a handful of marginal assets that are unlikely to move the needle. That\u2019s not getting New York out of this mess \u2014 not even close.<\/p>\n Drury\u2019s seat will grow even hotter this summer, when he\u2019ll need to make some magic happen to restore any semblance of hope for a disenchanted fan base. Trocheck will be back on the trade block, as will Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re, Braden Schneider and others, but who\u2019s to say the offers will be better for a crop of players the league just told him they don\u2019t value as much as he does? Oh, by the way, Drury still has to convince his best remaining players<\/a> \u2014 namely Adam Fox, Igor Shesterkin and Mika Zibanejad \u2014 that he has a plan to salvage the prime of their careers.<\/p>\n He kicked the can down the road for a few months, but the moment of truth is coming. Maybe that\u2019s why he was in no mood to help out his USA Hockey buddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after the buzzer sounded on Friday\u2019s NHL trade deadline, Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin made an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,3617,575,85],"class_list":["post-525267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}