New York Rangers GM Jeff Gorton knows that some have already begun ticking off the years, weeks, days, hours until his franchise's untimely demise, until they're no longer considered one of the powers in the East, the league. Thanks to the efforts of the recently departed Glen Sather, Gorton's Rangers are chock full of established talent. The problem is that, thanks to Sather, the Rangers also jettisoned many of their high draft picks in recent seasons in exchange for even more established - and aging - stars like Rick Nash and Keith Yandle. Another fading star, Martin St. Louis, called it an amazing and unexpected career this offseason.
Will the Rangers continue to compete in the immediate future? Yes. Are there concerns about where the roster is heading in terms of collective age? Also yes. Many key players are young - Derek Stepan is 25, Ryan McDonagh is 26 - but others like Nash and perhaps even goaltender Henrik Lundqvist are entering the portion of their careers where statistical dropoff is all but assured.
Still, Gorton seems unconcerned.
"Everyone talks about this window, I don't look at it like we have a window. I look at it like this is another year we're trying to win," Gorton said recently, via Craig Custance of ESPN. "I don't know if we're going to close the window on trying to win."
And Lundqvist, after backstopping the Rangers to the Eastern Conference final three of the last four seasons, says the team expects to continue contending.
"Maybe the difference now and maybe the past three or four years is you feel when you get here you have different expectations on our team that maybe we didn't have my first four, five years," Lundqvist said Monday, via Andrew Gross of The Record.
"We were always hoping to be a contender. Now, I think we all expect to be up there."
The question remains though, whether or not New York will contend beyond the next season or two.
While the Rangers do have a bit of talent in the AHL pipeline, Custance, speaking to an unnamed NHL scout, discovered that many of the young players in the Rangers system are considered projects - intriguing, talented, but projects nonetheless. Custance's fellow ESPNer Corey Pronman recently released his ranking of organizational prospect rankings and pegged the Rangers, led by the likes of Brady Skjei, Ryan Graves and Adam Tambellini, at No. 29.
"We have a bunch of European players who couldn't come," Gorton said. "We like a lot of our prospects, it's just that they're not able to be seen due to injury or they're in Europe. I don't think it's as bare as some people might suggest. I would tell you that trading your first pick and some seconds, too -- eventually it's going to take its toll."
And that right there lies at the heart of the matter for Gorton. He is taking the place of a GM in Sather who wasn't afraid to deal picks in order to add premium established talent. It's a strategy that has brought the franchise success, but hasn't brought them to their ultimate goal of a Stanley Cup.
Perhaps if Gorton can ease off the trades and instead invest in the draft, the Rangers window will stay open, perhaps without an expiration date at all.
"I think we have a nice future. [Kevin] Hayes, [Chris] Kreider, [J.T.] Miller -- some good young players who can all get better, and our team will be better because of that," Gorton said. "I'm not buying the window. We'll keep the window open as long as we can."
