Will Borgen.Alika Jenner/Getty Images
The New York Rangers’ problems right now are well-documented.
They’re playing atrocious hockey and, if the season ended today, wouldn’t be a playoff team. But the real story has been very public discontent within the organization.
Kaapo Kakko’s recent complaints about being a healthy scratch were only the latest installation in a season-long melodrama.
With a team needing wholesale change, it’s no surprise that they moved on from the disgruntled winger.
The reality is that these developments only expedited the inevitable. Kakko was due for another contract in the summer and the organization is stocked with young wingers on the up-and-up. Gabe Perreault, Brennan Othmann and Brett Berard will all be fighting for full-time NHL status next season, with Adam Sýkora not far behind. They’ll need cheap, young players to fill up the lineup as they attempt to find more expensive solutions to problems on defense and maybe at center.
So on that front, the Rangers made a reasonable assessment of the state of the organization and team needs.
It feels like Kakko has been around forever but he is still just 23. There are players just breaking through at that age. Even if the Finnish winger has plateaued in his development, he is a 45-point winger with a strong defensive presence and could be a capable NHLer for the next decade. That’s a valuable player in the NHL landscape.
And what do the Rangers have to show for it?
When Will Borgen is on his game, he can be a useful defenseman. He brings little offense, but the 6’3″ Minnesota native is a good skater for his size. He can retrieve pucks and find exits out of the defensive zone. He’s a decent enough defender against the rush, a glaring weakness for the Rangers. At his best, Borgen is a shutdown third-pairing defenseman.
But Borgen has been very poor for Seattle this season. Statistically, the righty has been one of the worst defensemen in the NHL in all facets: offensive, defensive, and overall impacts. It’s possible the Rangers just made their defense even worse.
The Rangers are betting that Borgen wasn’t a fit for new head coach Dan Bylsma’s systems, but to what end? Even if he figures it out in New York, it will be as a third-pairing defenseman who becomes an unrestricted free agent in six months.
Ignore Kakko’s history as a second-overall pick. The Rangers traded a young middle-six winger who plays a 200-foot game in return for spare parts. It’s hard to see how, even in the best-case scenario, this does much of anything to change the trajectory of their season while offering little in the way of long-term help.