It was another busy week in late February for Jeff Gorton. And because of that, it will be another busy weekend for the Rangers GM when late June rolls around.
Gorton finally was able to take a breath somewhere around 3:01 p.m. on Monday afternoon, and by that time, once the dust had settled on trade deadline day 2019, Gorton could look back on a week full of excruciating decisions, but one in which his hockey club continued to accrue the blocks to build a true contender.
Among the Rangers' additions were and another three (and possibly four) draft picks to their cupboard on Monday, which came two days after they got their hands on two other early-round picks. And now Gorton will be able to head to Vancouver heavily armed, with a second straight year of 10 picks in June's NHL Draft, and once again with five of them in the first two rounds alone.
Gorton Talks Trade Deadline Acquisitions and Adding Draft Picks
"I think now if we have 10 in this draft and 10 in the next draft and 10 last draft," Gorton said in an interview with NYRangers.com, "I think that's a pretty good start to a team trying to rebuild and gain as many young prospects they can."
On Monday, ahead of the NHL's 3 p.m. trade deadline, Gorton brought in 22-year-old winger Brendan Lemieux - son of Claude Lemieux - along with a first-round draft choice this season and a conditional fourth-round pick in 2022 from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for Kevin Hayes. Just a few hours later, the GM picked up the Columbus Blue Jackets' fourth- and seventh-round picks in June's draft along with 23-year-old defenseman Julius Bergman, sending Adam McQuaid the other way.
That puts the Blueshirts on the board for 10 slots in the 2019 Draft - and the potential exists that four of them could be first-rounders: Should the Dallas Stars win two rounds in the playoffs, the second-rounder they sent to New York on Saturday becomes a first-rounder. And another of the Rangers' second-round picks moves up to Round 1 should the league-leading Lightning go on the win the Stanley Cup.
All told: 10 picks in last year's draft (including three first-rounders), 10 in this year's draft (five in the first two rounds), and 10 more in 2020.
"We're trying to gain as many assets as we can," Gorton said, adding that he may choose to go last year's route and select 10 players, but that "you also have the opportunity to make trades. You have what people want. If there's a younger player in the league that we want to go get, we actually have the assets to go get them."
"Listen," Gorton said, "the key to this whole thing is going to be drafting well, and giving yourself as many chances as you can get" - and so while that part of the equation will have to wait until the summertime, one of the players acquired on Monday will join the fold right away.
Many Ranger fans will be familiar with the hockey bloodlines of Lemieux, whose ex-Devil dad was a four-time Stanley Cup-winner and a frequent foil of the Rangers, among other teams. Lemieux seems to share some of his father's peskier traits: He leads all rookies in penalty minutes this season with 64, but at the same time has scored nine goals in 44 NHL games this season while seeing just 7:25 average ice time for the Central Division-leading Jets.
"Brendan Lemieux is a hard-nosed player that shows up to work every day," Gorton said of the lefty shot who scored 100 goals along with 355 penalty minutes over his last three seasons in junior, and who the Rangers expect will go to work with them for practice on Tuesday morning. "Finishes his checks, goes to the net - I think he kind of embodies how we want to play, how the coach wants to play. I think it's good to have a guy like that in our room that people can count on and know what to expect every day.
"And there's so much room for opportunity because he does have that skill and he has that toughness. It'll be interesting to see what he can do for us."
The 10 selections the Rangers made in last June's draft were the most the team had made since the NHL went to its current seven-round format in 2005. So now that Gorton, Director of Player Personnel Gordie Clark and their staff have been through this exercise only a summer ago, and "feel like we did quite well in that draft," the GM believes their experience has given them a firm grasp of the ways they can play their hand when they pull up to the table with a big pile of chips.
"From last year having six picks and seeing the opportunity, and talking to other managers and people around the league, and having been through a situation with four years without a (first-round) draft pick, the amount of conversations you're in is greater, and the opportunities are greater to improve your team on a daily basis," Gorton said. "We learned that last year. To go in there with our eyes wide open to what might be available, to what we can do with those picks, the opportunities seem pretty good."
The acquisitions made on Monday, of course, did not come at no cost. The Rangers parted with a pair of highly respected players in Hayes and McQuaid. Hayes came seventh in the Calder Trophy voting when he began his Ranger career out of Boston College in the 2014-15 campaign, and went on to put up 216 points over five seasons for the club. McQuaid, the soft-spoken, hard-hitting blueliner brought in from Boston in September made an immediate impact over his five months with the team.
And these moves came two days after the Rangers said goodbye to Mats Zuccarello, a three-time winner of the Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award who captured the hearts of RangersTown over his nine seasons in a Blueshirt.
"When you talk about trading Mats Zuccarello, a player that's been so important to this franchise on and off the ice for a long time, for the better part of a decade, it's very hard," Gorton said. "It's very hard for everybody - it's hard for the players, it's hard for the coaches, extremely hard for the fans I know. It's hard for us too - those are hard calls to make, but something you feel like you have to do.
"Kevin Hayes as well has been a really good player, a great Ranger, signed here as a free agent, chose the Rangers, got better every year and had a huge impact on our success. … Adam McQuaid played hard for us, really helped Brady (Skjei) emerge here in the second half, played tough and helped us in a lot of ways. We thank him for his effort too.
"Real hard conversations. Difficult to let these players go. But a necessary thing to do if we're going to go where we want to go."
