The New York Rangers have made a stronger effort to draft and develop young players over the last few seasons, and this strategy has worked well for them.
Before the 2004-05 lockout and the first few years that followed, the Rangers usually spent big in free agency to add veteran stars to the roster, but several of those signings turned out to be poor decisions (Bobby Holik, Chris Drury, Wade Redden and Scott Gomez, for example).
Now that the Rangers have an impressive core of young players on the blue line, it would be a terrible decision to break up this group to acquire a veteran player who is a "rental" as an upcoming unrestricted free agent (UFA) or an aging player past his prime.
Larry Brooks of the New York Post recently shared his opinion on young defenseman Michael Del Zotto:
Derek Stepan, Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller are as untouchable now as they were at last year’s deadline, when the Blue Jackets tried to pry some combination of the above in exchange for Rick Nash, and whatever happened anyway to No. 61, anyway? Unless they’ve lost their minds in the executive offices of the Garden, Chris Kreider would also b ...
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Article written by Nicholas Goss
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March 22nd, 2013 by Nicholas Goss Leave a reply »
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