MTPS: The Last KRide of Chris and His Immortals

With the trade deadline coming up fast and the Rangers chances of making the playoffs slipping further into the abyss, I’m looking at a bunch of trades that the Rangers could make, should make, and most likely won’t make.

Recapping what we’ve done so far:

Gone: K’Andre Miller, Ryan Lindgren, Reilly Smith, Sam Carrick, Jimmy Vesey, Zac Jones, and Jonathan Quick

All three salary retention spots have been used

In: Logan Stanley, Jack McBain, Cole Beaudoin, Will Kahan, Jacob Julien, Niko Huuthanen, Winnipeg’s 2025 1st Round pick, TBD 2025 2nd Round pick, two 2026 4th Round picks, and a 2nd in 2026.

Note: Following the trade of Ryan Lindgren and Jimmy Vesey the Rangers have added Calvin de Haan, Juuso Parssinen, a 2nd Round pick in 2025 and a 4th Round pick in 2025; not Logan Stanley and Winnipeg's 1st Round Pick.

Up today: The True Captain—Chris Kreider

First off, I hate this. I just want to be clear about that. I hate that it has come to this for Chris Kreider and that, much like I said in the article about Ryan Lindgren, Kreider will be remembered for how things end rather than how they went. 

In my lifetime there have been four players drafted and developed by the Rangers who have had truly elite careers here: Henrik Lundqvist, Igor Shesterkin, Brian Leetch, Chris Kreider. Kreider’s career can be broken down into two categories: The Pre-Extension Era where Larry Brooks often dubbed him the “Invisible Man” for his penchant for vanishing for long stretches of games and seasons, only to then show up with his tantalizing combination of speed and strength (though never as much physicality as we wanted) to dominate a game. This was the time from about 2016-2018 when, for a brief moment in time, we had hope.

Chris Kreider, J.T. Miller, Kevin Hayes, Jimmy Vesey, Ryan McDonagh, Pavel Buchnevich, Mika Zibanejad, Mats Zuccarello, Derek Stepan, Brady Skjei. They were all in their 20s and looking like the future core of this team. Rick Nash was still an effective 32-year old and Hank was still on top of his game at 34. It was not to be though, as the continued deterioration of Marc Staal and Dan Girardi combined with the general ineptitude of Alain Vigneault conspired to cost the Rangers opportunities and saw them plummet in the standings year after year. During this time Kreider was regularly sitting around 20 goals per season. Good, but like everyone else on the roster, not living up to expectations. 

Then came the 2020/21 season where Kreider—at the ripe old age of 30—kicked it into a new gear. Setting up shop in front of the net, Kreider became a tipping machine, redirecting shots past goalies on the regular and becoming one of only four New York Rangers players in history to score more than 50 goals. He vaulted himself into serious consideration for surpassing all-time greats like Jean Rattele and Rod Gilbert for most goals scored as a Ranger. The post-goal roars, the bromance, the smashing of Mika’s iPad, the hat-trick against Carolina in the playoffs. It was all the stuff that gave fans all the feels. Kreider was going to get to do what Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera got to do, and what was denied to Brian Leetch and Patrick Ewing: He was going to play his entire career in New York. He was going to be only a Ranger. It was only a matter of when, not if, number 20 would hang from the rafters at the Garden.

That was then. This is now.

A disastrous season coming after several years of disappointing playoff exits has forced Chris Drury to take a cold-blooded approach to this core of players and I think the writing is on the wall that this is not going to be the storybook ending that Kreider was looking for. We're now starting to all acknowledge that whether Kreider is moved in the next few days or over the summer, the odds of him being on the ice for the Rangers when the 2025-26 season starts are—at best—slim.

I hate this.

As always, we’re going to start with some comps.

Rick Nash

Part of what has gone wrong for the Rangers this season has been Kreider’s health. Persistent back issues have hampered his effectiveness and availability throughout the season. For the Big Nashty, the issues were more about concussions. In 2014-15, Nash played 79 games and put up 42 goals and 69 points overall. The following two years his game totals dropped into the 60s and his points’ totals were in the 30s. The next year he was traded to the Bruins as the Rangers began their rebuild.

Traded by the New York Rangers to the Boston Bruins for 1st Round draft pick in 2018, 7th Round draft pick in 2019, Matt Beleskey, Ryan Lindgren, and Ryan Spooner.

Vladimir Tarasenko

As an outsider it did not appear that Artemi Panarin enjoyed year 2 of the Gerard Gallant experience. He was struggling to find his game and didn’t seem to have any real enthusiasm or chemistry on the ice. In an attempt to jump start Panarin, GM Chris Drury turned to one of Panarin’s good friends, Vlad Tarasenko. The long-time member of the St. Louis Blues, Tarasenko had control over his destiny and so his destinations were limited.

Traded by the St. Louis Blues with Niko Mikkola to the New York Rangers for a 1st Round draft pick in 2023, 4th Round draft pick in 2024, Sammy Blais, and Hunter Skinner.

Martin St. Louis

Tampa Bay was actually having a really strong 2013-14 season, but they were also in a time of transition. The offseason had seen the departure of captain Vincent Lacavallier to the Flyers and coach Guy Boucher had been replaced by Jon Cooper. Marty was in his first (and only) year as team captain, but was also having issues with Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman. He requested to be traded to the Rangers and, having a NMC, Yzerman did very well considering that he had no leverage in trade negotiations. 

Traded by the Tampa Bay Lightning with 2nd Round draft pick in 2015 to the New York Rangers for 1st Round draft pick in 2014, 1st Round draft pick in 2015, 7th Round draft pick in 2015, and Ryan Callahan.

I think these three comps give us a pretty solid baseline for a Chris Kreider deal. The Rangers should expect at least a 1st round pick, prospect, and roster player (possibly to help offset costs). 

Who wants Chris Kreider?

There are two different categories of teams that would be interested in Kreider. You have your veteran teams that are looking to compete either this year or next, and your younger teams that need a veteran leader to help usher them into an era of contention. Kreider has a partial no-trade clause, and teams in the second category may not appeal to him. But we’ve seen Chris Drury work around partial no-trade clauses in moving out Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba, so I don’t know how much that will actually stand in the way of a Kreider deal. 

A couple of teams who fit the first category—veteran teams that want to contend over the next two years—are Nashville, Boston, and Pittsburgh. 

Boston has made a ton of sense ever since Kreider’s name surfaced in trade talks. Not only would it be a homecoming for Kreider, but Bruins’ GM Don Sweeney invested a ton of money this past offseason in players like Nikita Zadorov and Elias Lindholm, only to have his team’s season fall apart. Veteran winger and noted face-licker Brad Marchand is an impending UFA and is approaching 37. For much of this season, Boston’s top left wing has been Morgan Geekie, who has played well since coming over from Seattle last season, but has never had more than 40 points in a season. Boston has some interesting young players—most notably Matthew Poitras—but a team built around this much veteran talent is not looking at a very long contention window. 

Nashville is in a very similar situation. Good-coach-but-terrible-GM Barry Trotz invested a ton of money over the summer to bring in Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, and Brady Skjei. They also handed out a long term contract to veteran goalie Juuse Saros as he is about to enter his age 30 season. The Predators are the third oldest team in the NHL with an average team age of 30.4 years. Again, this is not a team that’s going to look at this year’s disappointing season and say “cool cool, we’ve got time.” There have been reports that the Predators are looking to move out some of their older players—namely Ryan O’Reilly—but they’re not going to rebuild. They’re going to retool and try to come back strong next year.  

That brings us to the final team I’m looking at: the oldest team in the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins. If Kyle Dubas wasn’t such a dislikable character I would almost feel bad for him. We’ve talked here about the fact that Chris Drury never really got the opportunity to put his imprint on this Rangers team. Well, that’s even more the case for Dubas in Pittsburgh. Say what you want about Kyle, but he’s smart enough to know that the Penguins never should have brought back Evgeni Malkin or Kris Letang, and that trading for Erik Karlsson was foolish. Unfortunately for Dubas, when you have Sidney Crosby running the show and saying that not only does he want to stay in Pittsburgh, but he wants to keep the band together, rebuilding is not an option. Penguins coach Mike Sullivan was an assistant here for a while, knows Kreider, and was effusive in his praise of #20 at the recent 4 Nations tournament. 

So, with all of that being said, which of these teams makes the most sense for Kreider and which team is most likely to give the Rangers the kind of return that they need?