358 - NY Rangers Offseason moves - and Optimism!

Rangers?  Optimism? for real, yes!   At least so over the last week.  1 week of moves actually provides some critical optimism for Rangers fans and the organization.  I discuss all the moves.

The Rangers have been hard to watch, and not just because of the scoreboard. When a team feels like a “morgue” on game nights, that is a sign something bigger is broken, from roster construction to day to day culture. I dig into the New York Rangers offseason and talk honestly about how Chris Drury got the team into this mess, why so many fans have him at public enemy number one status, and what changed over the last week to create a real spark of hope.

I start with the biggest swing: the trade for Pavel Dorofeyev and the massive seven year, $77 million extension. He is a 25 year old sniper with back to back 35 goal seasons, and that skill set fills an immediate scoring need on the wing. From there I hit the supporting moves, including middle 6 winger Oliver Bjorkstrand on a one year deal, Joe Vellino as a likely fourth line center, and the trade of Vincent Trochek to the Utah Mammoth. Losing Trochek hurts, especially on faceoffs and two way play, but the return brings real value with offensive defenseman Sean Derzi plus additional assets.

Then I get into why the blue line could look completely different: Derzi’s breakout passing, Marcus Peterson arriving for a future first, and how the defensive pairs finally start to make sense alongside Adam Fox. I also talk draft direction with No. 5 pick Albert Smits (D), the prospect watch around Liam Greentree, and the one move that makes me shake my head: the Joonas Korpisalo backup goalie contract. Finally, I discuss the off ice shift as James Dolan hands day to day operations to Quinton Dolan, and why leadership and culture changes might matter as much as any NHL trade.

If you care about the Rangers rebuild versus retool debate, hit play, subscribe, and share the show with a friend. After you listen, what move actually changes the team’s ceiling next season?

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Transcript

Welcome and Rangers Rock Bottom

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Jersey Guy Sports, your sports talk home for the Yanks, the Giants, the Knicks, the Rangers, and the Rutgers Car Knights, and I'm your host, Don. Thank you for listening. Today I'm going to be discussing the New York Rangers and their off-season that actually offer some promise. I go over all the moves, all the transactions, let's see how it looks. So let's go ahead and get started. So, what do you say we talking about the New York Rangers? It's been a minute for sure, and the Rangers on my passion teams for sure, and it's been dreadful to be a New York Ranger fan for sure over the last year or two. And if you bleed blue as a hockey fan like I do, by the end of last year, you almost didn't want to watch hockey games anymore. You know, you've seen little prospects here and there, might have provided you a little bit of balm on the bruises, but boy oh boy, it was a tough product to watch, a miserable attitude, a miserable everything. The events of Ranger Games became sort of morgues, right? After the Rangers missed the playoffs for the second straight year, Drury basically gutted this team with horrible trades, terrible moves, and created a culture and atmosphere that both the players didn't like and fans grew disgusted about. Drury has become public enemy number one for New York Ranger fans over the last year or two. And while early successes had Drury in pretty high standing, both with ownership and with the fans, Drury created this mess. He absolutely gutted this Rangers team, you know, with terrible trades, like you know, Panarin getting almost no return for Panarin, Chris Kreider getting very little to nothing back for Kreider, and then just everything else, trading away Heedle and Kacko and Truba, really anyone that can put the puck in the net. You know, he traded away for pennies on the dollar. He traded away captains, you know, Truba was traded away in a in terrible fashion. It's not just the trades, but apparently after the players get traded, they've been talking about the terrible culture and atmosphere and just the methods that these trades went down, you know, with the lack of, you know, owning up to it, telling players ahead of time, involving players in the trade, things like that. Chris Drury's done a terrible job when it comes to actually informing the players and doing what they need to do when it comes to being a professional club here. In addition, he made other bad trades like bringing in JT Miller, who is supposedly a grittier type player that was supposed to move the Ranger from too soft in the playoffs to grittier. But JT Miller just has been a shell of himself. He has not been a good ranger whatsoever and has played basically like dog shit for the Rangers. He is not a number one center, even though he is the Rangers number one center. And so, again, we got fleeced in another trade that Drury was part of, you know, and there are many more trade disasters. I'm not going to go back through. Let's just say before this offseason, where we now have picked up and had some optimism, Chris Drury absolutely gutted this Rangers team. So Drury and the Rangers are now faced with trying to clean up this, admittedly, self-inflected mess that is now or was a week ago, the New York Rangers roster. And boy, did Drury have a lot of work to do to fix that dumpster file that Drury and Drury alone cost. But recent moves have brought a bit of optimism if you're a Ranger fan. And if you have not been following along, and there's a lot of reasons not to, even though you know you might be an NHL fan, obviously there's a ton in sports going on over the last, you know, couple weeks to a month. I mean, number one, the Knicks won the championship. Awesome, had a parade, right? You have the Yankees and Mets going on, both, you know, recently playing terribly. You know, the World Cup has started. There's all kinds of focus on that. So there's NBA trades and free agency and big splashes all over the news when it comes to that stuff. And so you're thinking, okay, you know, yeah, I mean, this is big stuff, right? Giannis was traded, all kinds of things happening in, you know, the Celtics traded Brown, like morons. And so if you didn't see all the things the Rangers did, it's hard to blame you. Because the Rangers actually, you know, flew under the radar here a bit and have come out of this, you know, actually looking better. And this has to be Drury's best week of being a GM, probably since he's got here. And I can't stand him as a general manager, but I gotta give him his flowers when you know he does well. And this last week or so overall, although it's not perfect, we'll get to that in a minute. He has improved the team that he completely gutted and made terrible. He's now improved it to way worse than when he started it, but better than it was a week ago. Let me tell you that.

The Dorofeyev Trade Sparks Hope

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So let's take a look at some of the moves that you know actually made this team better. The biggest and best and most splashy surprise uh included a trade that the Rangers made with the Vegas Golden Knights for Pavel Doraviev. And Doroviev is a splashy surprise acquisition, and the Rangers then immediately signed him to a seven-year, $77 million contract extension. He is a forward, he is a sniper winger, he is only 25 years old. He has scored 35 or more goals two straight years now. Again, he's only 25, right? And he fills an immediate, glaring need at the wing after Panarin was traded away for Tiddly Winks this past spring. So he is obviously not Artemis Panarin, nobody is, but he is a person that can fill a scoring need, a big drought that was left by, you know, Panarin, everyone else that jury trade away, but most specifically and recently Panarin. So again, he is not the playmaker at all that Panarin was, but he can shoot, he can score, he is a sniper, and he's only 25 years old. So it's a pretty exciting move. The Rangers traded their second later first round pick this year, so they traded the number 26 overall pick in the first round, and their number 92 pick in this year's 2026 NHL draft, as well as a 2028 top 10 protected first round pick. So two more first round picks are not nothing, but it was definitely worth it. Definitely worth it. Now for a team that is stuck without a lot of top prospects and certainly was, trading away two first-round picks, and we'll talk in a minute, he traded another for another player later, is not something you would immediately associate with a good trade. But in this case, it absolutely was a good trade. Number one, because the Rangers kept their number five overall selection this year and traded their number 26 overall selection in the first round this year. And at 26, you know, it's a good pick, you want it, but it's nowhere near what the number five pick is. And because the Rangers were able to hold on to that number five pick, they filled a big need on defense. And, you know, at 26, it's a little hit and miss. You don't really know what you're gonna get. And another big reason why Drury has been disgusting as a GM over these past, say, five years is the Rangers continue to absolutely whiff on all of their first round picks. So there's no guarantee whatsoever that if the Rangers had kept the number 26 pick, that it would have amounted to anything with the way they've drafted recently. But in any case, bottom line is a great trade, a great trade by Drew Re, maybe the best one he's made since he's gotten here. Pavel Doraviev, 25 years old, scores 35 goals a year or more, plays the wing, and will be on the Rangers, you know, either top line or second line, one way or the other. He will be in the top six, get lots of minutes, and will fill a big, big scoring need. So that is definitely, definitely reason for optimism, even if we had to trade away two first-round picks, a number 26 this year, and a top 10 protected first round pick in 2028. So overall, if you're gonna trade first-round picks, which I don't love, this is the kind of guy to get a young, 25-year-old, proven NHLer, proven scorer that fills a direct need that the Rangers need. So this is the time you trade first rounders, not for other reasons. So excellent job by Drury there.

Low Risk Free Agent Adds

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Some other signings. This one is lesser. The Rangers signed Oliver York Strand. He signed a one-year, $4.5 million contract with the Rangers right on the trade deadline July 1st. I'm sorry, the free agent deadline. He's a he was an unrestricted free agent. He's a winger, and apparently he's 31, and he's had four straight seasons of 20 goals, at least before last season. Last year he did not have a good season, but he had a sort of diminished role with Tampa Bay last year. But before that, he had 20 or more goals in four straight seasons. So he'll probably end up playing in the top six somewhere, if not certainly the middle six, you know, second, second line or third line. He's not going to be on the top line, you know. So he'll probably play either on the second line or on the third line. And again, you're not really paying much or risking much here, right? One year, $4.5 million for a guy that had been a somewhat proven scorer, you know, 20 goals for four years in a row is not nothing. So not bad there. The Rangers also signed a center. His name is John Vellino, an NHL free agency. Again, just a one-year deal for $1.2 million. He'll probably end up being the fourth line center. Not much to say about Joe Vellino here, other than he's a fourth line center. Obviously, you can get them anywhere, take them anywhere, grab one out of the AHL in your Meyer League system for anywhere. It's a million dollars. It's not a big deal, but probably an upgrade. A big trade that was pending and just happened regarding forwards. And if you haven't noticed, I'm talking about the forwards here first, and then I'll get to the defenseman because there's some big stuff going on there

Trading Trochek and Valuing Faceoffs

SPEAKER_00 10:50

as well. Vincent Trochek was traded recently to the Utah Mammoth. And in exchange, we received an excellent defenseman named Sean Derzy, as well as a pretty good forward prospect named Cole Badoy, and then a 2027 third-round pick. Now, losing Trochek obviously is going to have some ramifications. Now he was older, and perhaps his play was diminishing somewhat. He definitely did not play as well this past season as he had previous seasons, but he brings a lot of stuff that will need to be filled on the Rangers. Without Trochek, the Rangers are going to be much, much worse on face-offs. Remember, he was a key face-off person, always one of the top, I'd say five or ten face-off centers in the league, maybe probably the top five, usually in the NHL. So not having him is a big deal. And if you've heard my podcast before, you know that I think face-offs are an underrated piece of the game that is way more important than anyone tends to give it credit for. You know, critical times in the game, particularly offensive zone, defensive zone, faceoffs. Don't care much about the center ice ones as much, but you're in the offensive zone, defensive zone, you know, you're down by a goal. Winning that face-off is a big deal, or you're up by a goal and you're pinned in your own zone for a face-off. You lose that that that face-off, and you know, you're you're in trouble there. And there's could be all kinds of pressure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? It is a much bigger deal in my mind than I think a lot of people give credit for. And having Trochek on the team, I think helped ease that burden a little bit and concern. And obviously, it's something that we will have to, you know, consider and see what we can do about. In addition to just face-offs, though, he was an excellent two-way player, Trochek, very responsible defensively and back checking. You know, he was a competent offensive center. I mean, I wouldn't say he was super skilled or, you know, a tremendous scorer or, you know, feeder of the puck, but he was very competent. You know, he scored enough goals to be, you know, to make him, you know, a concern for the other teams. He was certainly physical, nasty. He's exactly the kind of playoff performer that you want. Whereas Panarin was just a tremendous regular season player, but sometimes faded in the playoffs because he doesn't have sort of a straight line approach. Trochek is exactly the straight line approach that you want in the playoffs, right? In your face, annoying people, you know, uh checking people in the corner, getting in their face, being in the slot, knocking off people. That is the kind of player that the Rangers have missed, trading him away. So while it's not nothing, we are going to, you know, miss those kind of qualities from Vincent Choček. And I think he was a good Ranger. And I think, you know, his acquisition, you know, was a good one. And I think losing him isn't a small deal. But again, this aging Rangers core probably needs to be upended a little bit. And I think, you know, once it got out there that Vincent Chochek was going to be traded, and that rumor's been out there most of last season, you're almost left with no choice but to then trade him because you can't let that sit out there. You certainly don't want that kind of negative energy in the locker room or around the team, especially if you know there's still a chance of being traded. You don't want to go into training camp and into the season. You know, when you don't want another Truba situation or Krider situation or others where it's just this lingering bad feeling and you know it seeps into the locker room. And the Rangers have enough of that shit. Drury has created enough of terrible vibe between Drury and Dolan with this team, they've created this dreary atmosphere that has to be turned over and traded. So, amongst all the NHL on ice reasons that Trochek should or should not have been traded, once it's been out there for six, eight months that Trochek is probably being traded, because of all the past Ranger problems, you have to almost trade them because of that. And given all of what I just said, I think the return was damn good, you know, for Trojak, given that probably most teams knew the Rangers need to trade them. Trochak had like a 15 team no trade clause still in effect. So what they got back, I'll discuss in a minimum in a minute, from the Utah Mammoth was a really good thing. And uh particularly with the Sean Dersey acquisition. So we'll see how the rest of the uh return goes. But Bench Trochek is gone. The Rangers, I mentioned, signed Joe Vellino. Again, he'll be the fourth line center probably.

Rebuilding the Blue Line With Derzi

SPEAKER_00 15:27

So let's move on to defense and talk about that one of the return pieces for the Trochek trade, and that is Sean Dersey. And he came from the Utah Mammoth, as I mentioned, in the Trochek trade. He is an offensive defenseman with scoring talent. He's got good skating, he has quick outlet passes. He'll not only can he be the quarterback on the second power play unit, but he's also pretty highly regarded for his transition skills. And as you guys know, if you're Ranger fans, if you bothered to watch the whole season last year, many of you probably didn't, but you know, breaking out the puck was, you know, never a strength of the Rangers. It was really quite an issue for the New York Rangers last year. We got pinned in our zone a lot. We we had trouble, you know, getting away from pressing forwards and making a quick outlet pass. So Jersey is going to help that tremendously and help pretty much everything else on our defense tremendously. We needed more scoring talent for sure. We needed someone who has quick breakout passes, you know, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and good skaters and all that good stuff, right? So, you know, obviously breaking out the puck with the issue that it was last year was made a priority in the offseason. And this return, getting Sean Dersey for Trochak really, I think is a good step in that direction. So good on the Rangers. That's gonna be a reason for excitement for the New York Rangers. And again, if we're looking at optimism, and this podcast is about New York Rangers optimism because there's some changes made that I think are gonna make Ranger fans want to actually sit up a little bit this next season and pay attention a little more after the dumpster fire we've watched over the last year or two. So, along with Dersey, he'll he'll probably line up with actually on the second defense pair with Marcus Peterson, who is a new acquisition. He's a lefty defenseman, Peterson is. He was acquired by the Rangers from Vancouver in exchange for a top 10 protected first round pick in 2030. Now, I don't love this particular trade giving up yet another first round pick. If you're counting, that is three first round picks the New York Rangers have given up in the last week or so for a team that quote unquote is not trying to rebuild, but they are. You know, he's Drury is real careful to call it a retool. He's a tool himself, so maybe that's why he wants to call it a retool. But maybe she's just called a re a redrew. It's it's not a rebuild, it's a redrewery, a retool. In any case, Peterson is a lefty D that we gave up a first round pick for in 2030, even though it's top 10 protected. So I don't love it, but Peterson is a pretty well-regarded defenseman. He's a proven defenseman, and he will definitely be, well, I won't say definitely, but it's likely that he will be on the second defensive pairing, and that has made, if you consider Peterson paired with Sean Dersey, the second Rangers defensive pair is now immensely, immensely better than it was. So there's an immediate reason for optimism on the Rangers D right there, right? Improvements up and down the defense, so that's pretty great. To make room for that, the Rangers traded Will Borgan away. They basically got some draft capital capital back from him, got rid of his four million dollar a year salary. So Borgett is no longer with the Rangers. So to kind of sum up the Rangers defense and where we ended there, the defensive pairs probably will look something like this. The first line, the first defensive pair will still be obviously Adam Fox and Vladimir Gavrikoff, right? So Fox and Gaverkov will be the top pair, probably. I'm thinking Sean Derzy and Marcus Peterson will probably be the second pair. And right now, since Schneider's still on the team, there's rumors about him being traded that so far haven't happened, but it can't happen. But as of right now, Schneider would probably be on the third pair, along with I think Matthew Robertson. So if you look at that three defensive pairs, that's pretty damn good. Where the Rangers really struggled on defense and had kind of a lot of problems. You now got Fox, Gavrikov, Dersey and Peterson, and Schneider and Robertson. That's pretty damn good. And obviously, injuries affect things and other people could come up and take some spots. You know, but but we'll see. We'll see how that goes. There's lots of people knocking on the door too, and I want to talk about the draft in in a little bit, but there's a good chance that the Rangers defense will not be something you have to shield your eyes from, you know, come come October of this year. By the way, Scott Morrow is still on the Rangers, too, so he could kind of break in there somewhere. Anyway, bottom line is, you know, the defensive changes look look really interesting and exciting. Now,

Drafting Albert Smits at No 5

SPEAKER_00 20:23

number five overall draft selection this year, the Rangers selected Albert Smiths. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast. He's an 18-year-old Latvian defenseman. Again, he was a number five overall pick in the 2026 draft for the Rangers. He is basically a pretty NHL ready piece. He kind of has an outside chance to start the season with the Rangers. So I mentioned those defensive pairs. You know, maybe you see him on the third line. Maybe you don't. We'll have to see how that goes. But, you know, he certainly has an outside chance at the at the least to make the team for sure. So there's some excitement there when it comes to the Rangers defense. Other picks or other, I should say, transactions in the offseason.

The Korpisalo Contract Raises Eyebrows

SPEAKER_00 21:07

The Rangers signed a backup goalie for some godforsaken reason. So here's a little negativity in our in our soup of positivity. Corpusello, right? The Rangers signed Giannis Corpusello from the Boston Bruins. He's a backup goaltender roles. He'll be behind Igor. And he has a $4 million salary, which is just an epic fail by jury. And I don't fucking understand it. And I did read later that Boston's picking up $1 million of that four, so three million. None of it matters. That's still way, way, way too much money for a backup goalie, particularly one of Corposalo's lack of ability. He is not that good. And I don't understand what it is about him that Drury found the need to waste that money on. We already have 24 year old. Dylan Garon, who deserves a role, has been playing pretty well in the backup goalie, particularly at the end of last season. And he's way cheaper. Just way cheaper. You know, I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense at all to give a Corpusello. I don't want to want him on the team, and I definitely don't want to pay him three or four million dollars. It's just, you know, all the good moves in the offseason, this is a dumbass, you know, old Jewelry, bad Jewry, you know, move here. Dumb. This is absolutely stupid. I don't, you know, perhaps they don't have faith yet in Dylan Girard as a backup role, but come on, guys. You know, I'm sure that we have other folks in the NHL too. We can draw on or make another quick trade. Anyone that doesn't require four million dollars a year for a backup goalie. I mean, Christ, we weren't paying quick that much money, and he's the best backup goalie on earth. It just doesn't make any sense. So, jury, wake the fuck up here. What are you doing? Um, other moves that were done of a more minor nature, Adam Edstrom was traded to Nashville for well, really for nothing, really. I mean, we got like the number 148th pick. I believe that's like a fourth or fifth round, or I guess. And we got a prospect named Massimo Rizzo. So that's basically our you know return for Adam Edstrom. I mean, you know, it was tough because there wasn't really much room left. Um, Brett Berard, by the way, was moved as well. You know, and the emergence of you know some other players has kind of put the squeeze on Barard and Edstrom, and that's why they they had to be moved. Honestly, Edstrom didn't really produce like I thought he was when he was brought up initially. Brett Berard had little flashes, but I don't know that he showed enough to really earn a spot here. Players like you know, Adam Sakura that came up and flashed a little bit, and you know Himlish, you know, Hamilye, Yaroslav did pretty good, I think, you know, and then there's some people that you know I think are just better than Berard and Edstrom. So moving them, I think, was not you know a big deal. And the Rangers had a bit of a log jam, a bottom sixers kind of building up. So I think moving Barard and Edstrom kind of gives some of the more younger, promising players kind of a clearer path, you know, to an opportunity for the Rangers. And that's always good. I I I want to see the Rangers trying new things because here we are, you know, the Rangers are not winning any cup this year. So, you know, we need to see options. We can't be stuck in our ways, you know, as we have been in the last two years, where you know, you have these players that just continue to not produce and then they get you know stuck there. You know, finally we've had the emergence at the end of last year of a few people, you know, having Gabe Perot up is very exciting. We'll see if La Frenier continues his you know end of year resurgence because he had another dog shit first half of the year, and then finally at the end of the year, he played well. You know, everyone's acting like that's it. Now it now he's here. We'll see. You know, it's been about two to three months of good play by La Frenier and about four years of dog shit play. So I want to see if this last couple months of play is the real thing or not. But it is exciting to see La Frenere play good hockey. It is great to see, you know, a great top line that we had last year, and Gabe Perot on the other wing, you know, really interesting stuff, you know, from some younger players, and we're gonna have to see if that can continue and provide, you know, some additional excitement for the New York Rangers. So others that might break in this year, I want to talk real quickly before I get out of here. Remember, we I said we traded away Panarin for nothing. Well, one of the things we did get back is somebody named Liam Greentree, and he's kind of the primary return we got in that awful Panarin trade in the spring. And this Green Tree is apparently a top prospect. He's a six foot three, two hundred and sixteen-pound right winger, and currently one of the premier forward prospects, apparently, in the Rangers organization, supposedly. He has size, he apparently has a physical presence. He does have supposedly elite playmaking ability, too. I'm kind of anxious myself to see what we have in him, particularly since we traded Panarin away for him. I want to say what the fuck we got back, you know, what kind of deshow disastrous a trade that Drury made, you know, Mr. Tool, retool himself. I want to see just how disastrous it was. Because if this kid can produce even at a moderate level, I will be slightly less disgusted that we traded Panarin away. But I don't think there's anything that anyone can do to, you know, kind of mitigate the giant hole that's left, you know, with without Artami Panarin on this team. But I am anxious to see Liam Greentree, and you know, maybe we'll see if he can break into you know the bottom six somewhere this this you know season. We'll see. We'll see. Six foot three, two sixteen, right winger, you know, physical ability, physical presence, apparently has elite playmaking ability. Let's see. Let's see what he does. I mentioned that Scott Morrow, who was acquired from the Hurricanes, he's kind of a smooth skating, offensively gifted, you know, righty defenseman. We'll see if he actually does anything with the Rangers. That's really it. That's a lot of stuff, right? There is reason for optimism there, right? You you you step back and you think about all that stuff that happened. And again, if you missed the last week, right, just about all of this is is the last week of stuff, right? So after gutting the Rangers team, right, we signed Pavel Durariev, right? He he is an excellent, excellent winger, 35 goals a year. He's only 25 years old, right? Good stuff. We got a fourth line center, Bjork stand, one-year contract, no big deal. We traded Trochak, but got back an outstanding defenseman in Sean Dersey, puck handling, offensive defenseman there. By the way, along with a forward prospect named Cole Badoyne, who's apparently a pretty good forward prospect. I didn't really mention him much, but he's supposedly pretty good, and we got a third-round pick, right? So there's some excitement there. We signed a fourth round center, Joe Vellino. I'm sorry, Bjorkstan is a winger. I there's too many signings here. Quick recap again from the top. Dorovayov, outstanding winger, 25. Sniper, 35 goals a year. Bjorkstan, $4.5 million, one-year contract, right? He has had four straight seasons of 20 goals or more. He'll he's a winger that will probably play in the top six. We got Sean Dersey, outstanding defenseman, will be on the second pair, defenseman with with probably, yeah, I I guess he'll probably be on with Marcus Peterson. But you know, Dersey is is a tremendous, I think, we'll see, you know, defenseman with speed and scoring ability. We have Joe Velino, the fourth line center. We have Marcus Peterson, who we signed up with, who's going to line up, we think, with Dersey. We have other, I guess interesting, I don't want to be too happy, but you know, Corpasalo as the backup goalie, and then we got rid of Adam Edstrom. We got rid of Barard. I mentioned we got rid of Trochek in the trade that brought us Dersey. And then there's the excitement of, you know, Liam Greentree and some of the other young Rangers. And of course, we drafted Albert Smith, who has all kinds of upside as NHL ready as a defenseman and could break in as early as this year, too. So that's a lot of change, and it's a lot of interest, a lot of things to be, I guess, optimistic for, right? All in a week. So if you were looking at the Knicks, you were looking at the parade, you were being begrudging the Yankees or the Mets who look terrible. You know, you were watching the World Cup, you were looking at other things, you missed a lot of NHL stuff and a lot of Ranger stuff.

Ownership Shift and Final Outlook

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Real quick before I leave here, the Rangers' day-to-day operations, the ownership of the Rangers changed hands as well. So if you blinked, you missed that. James Dolan gave day-to-day operations of the New York Rangers to his son, Quinton Dolan, who is now going to basically run the Rangers. So James Dolan will not. His son Quinton will, he is young. He is a 32-year-old VP, senior VP, who hopefully brings some kind of culture change to the Rangers. And we talked before about how Dolan droolery completely created a culture of depression and fear. And apparently the people that work with the Rangers and some of the staff are not even allowed to, if they're allowed to travel, they can't even stay in the same hotel or see anyone on the road. I don't know what kind of incidents may or may not ha have happened, but all the little tiny things that make, you know, a team attractive to potential free agents, you know, need to be cleaned up for the New York Rangers because there was this aura between the players that got traded away and talked about how terrible the situation was and others who are currently on the team saying you can't do this, you can't do that. That creates a situation that has to be improved. So with a new ownership in place now, essentially, I mean James Dolan still owns the team, but a new day-to-day operations runner of the team, Quentin Dolan, there's some things to attack, and that is one of the things to attack. Hopefully, he brings a culture change along with a new way of thinking about certain things. Certainly, this first week of transactions certainly didn't hurt. Maybe it was all dreary, maybe it was inspired by Quentin. I don't know. Either way, you have to be happy with this first week of stuff. The Rangers also fired their AHL coach, made other updates to leadership areas. We will see, right? Overall, it's a very promising offseason, but the Rangers are still very, very far away from being great because of just how badly Drury destroyed this team over the last couple of years. So this is a step up that mountain. They have a long, big, giant mountain, long trail to climb. But this is a couple steps up. This was pretty good here. This offseason, at least so far, does a bit to improve on that and at least give fans something to hope for, something to root for, right? If you're a ranger fan, is it optimism? It could be. Let's see where it goes from here. Anyway, it's it's nice to talk Rangers and nice to actually have some hope and something to look forward to in the fall. Because honestly, a week ago I had nothing to look forward to and didn't really see a path to any kind of success. But if you're a Ranger fan, even the biggest Ranger Drury hater like I am, you have to give credit to him and the team and have a little bit of hope going forward. So good stuff. All right, that's going to do it for the podcast. Thank you for listening to Jersey Guy Sports. Please subscribe to the podcast. Tell your friends all about it. I will be back soon with some more sports talk. Thanks.