Trade additions have given Rangers new life

There was no team in the NHL that was better positioned at the trade deadline than the New York Rangers.

They had one of the league’s best records, had impact players at forward, defense, and goalie, with the latter position being manned by the likely Vezina Trophy winner and a major Hart Trophy contender in Igor Shesterkin.

Along with that they also had an enormous amount of salary cap space to address the very real flaws that existed on their roster, specifically relating to their scoring depth and complementary parts.

They did not waste that opportunity, acquiring Frank Vatrano, Andrew Copp, Tyler Motte, and Justin Braun in a series of trades. It has been a completely different team since then, and all for the better.

The biggest concern with the Rangers in the first half of the season is that a significant portion of their success was driven by the play of Shesterkin.

When he started, the Rangers won. When he did not start, they typically lost. And the wins were in large part his doing because the Rangers had some of the worst underlying numbers of any potential playoff team. They gave up a ton of shots, were typically out-chanced, and did not get much of anything from their bottom-six in terms of production.

In the 10 games since the trade deadline they have done a complete 180 in a lot of those areas. Let’s dive into a few key areas here and see the improvements and what they might mean.

This is probably the biggest change for the Rangers. Not only have their underlying and possession numbers improved since the new additions were made, they have been among the best in the NHL over the past 10 games.

The table below looks at their performance over the past 30 games, broken down into 10-game stretches, in total shot