The vibes around the New York Rangers are, to be blunt, not good.
That might even be an understatement at this point, following an NHL draft that featured only four picks and a free-agency period that yielded just a fourth-line forward and a useful middle-six winger. The lack of activity has a good portion of the fan base up in arms, with social media bemoaning the lack of a big personnel splash that might help the 2023-24 Presidents Trophy winners get over the championship hump after yet another season that ended without a championship.
There’s a lingering issue, though, that had a role in the failure to improve the roster and has the potential to get ugly, one that could play a major role in really weighing down the Blueshirts’ next crack at lifting the Cup this season. That, of course, is the Jacob Trouba saga, which came to a head at the outset of free agency and which could seemingly inject plenty of bad blood into the discourse around the team in 2024-25.
What happened at the start of July was anything but the beginning of the road Trouba and the Rangers had been going down for a while. The captain had been in many fans’ crosshairs for years, with a segment of the fanbase feeling the defenseman had never come close to living up to the seven-year, $56 million contract he signed in 2019. That sentiment became harder to argue against after Trouba turned in a woeful 2024 playoff performance, perhaps hampered in part by injury, as the Blueshirts fell in six games to the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final.
The defeat was largely a team effort, but the 30-year-old became one of the main faces of the loss. With it, his contract ended up as a target again – and as it turned out, that was the case not just for fans, but the front office.
Failure to Trade Trouba Might Result in Tense, Difficult Situation
It was widely reported that general manager Chris Drury, having disposed of winger Barclay Goodrow’s contract via the waiver wire June 20 after the veteran blocked a trade to the San Jose Sharks, who then claimed Goodrow, was looking to get out from under Trouba’s $8 million cap hit when the deal’s no-move clause converted to a 15-team no-trade July 1. To that end, Drury requested Trouba’s no-trade list a few days before it was due, that being midnight July 1.
Trouba and his camp didn’t go for it, however, and held off on providing the list until close to the deadline, which unquestionably complicated Drury’s plans to sign players on the first day of free agency. After a much-rumored swap with the Detroit Red Wings that would have sent the Michigan native home never materialized, further reporting indicated that Trouba’s reasons for wanting to stay were hardly just about himself.
Trouba’s wife, a physician, is scheduled to complete her residency at a New York hospital July 1, 2025. Her career was a key factor in Jacob’s desire to come to the Rangers from the Winnipeg Jets, and the Troubas also welcomed their first child in January.
So it appears that Trouba made decisions based on family in addition to his own career, which is more than admirable. Nothing he did during the process broke rules or could be considered underhanded, as he and his agent followed the terms of his contract. By the same token, Drury, in doing his job, made a reasonable request of a player as he looked to retool his roster. And Trouba and the Rangers’ front office are reportedly still on good terms.
There’s a larger question here, though: Is this a good situation for both sides going into the season, and does it have the potential to deteriorate?
Related: Salary Cap Limits Force Rangers to Lean on Existing Core
While it’s probably a fair guess that most Rangers fans respect Trouba’s reasoning, they’re going to be fans first when it comes to their favorite hockey team. Fair or not, some are sure to blame Trouba for being the reason why Drury couldn’t have made bigger plays for top free agents, with the team having so little cap space and needing Trouba’s $8 million salary slot to be a serious player in those negotiations.
If Trouba’s poor play carries over from the postseason and he gets off to a rough start, the tension between player and fans is sure to ramp up significantly. Is there a realistic scenario in which Trouba plays so well that his apparent refusal to leave – which again, fairly or not, played a big role in the Rangers’ inability to upgrade the roster – is forgotten by the faithful, many of whom felt that the team should move on from him even before this offseason started?
That relationship might be on uneasy ground at best, with the possibility of fan frustration becoming a distraction. That’s not what the Blueshirts need, a season after coach Peter Laviolette and the team’s leaders – Trouba included – helped foster a tight, committed culture that was a major factor in the club’s best-ever regular season.
Will Trouba be booed at Madison Square Garden if he commits a costly turnover? How would that impact his play, given that he was reportedly already shocked and no doubt hurt that the Rangers were trying to move him out?
Fan anger is rarely rational, especially in the age of social media. Yet Trouba’s presence on the roster for 2024-25 could very easily become a season-long headache of a storyline that undermines this team’s focus on finally hoisting the Stanley Cup, and it seems naive to believe otherwise, whether such a reaction toward Trouba is justifiable or not.
Fan Acrimony Toward Trouba Is a Possibility
Naivete on both sides, in fact, seems to have played a crucial role in all of this. Trouba believing that the Rangers wouldn’t be interested in getting out from under his huge cap hit this summer after a rough season in which he was demoted to the third defensive pair comes across as borderline denial – especially after Drury acted ruthlessly in ridding the Rangers of Goodrow. Trouba understands how the business of the NHL works.
“Fans think of things in a different aspect – that’s just the nature of sports,” Trouba said in 2019. “It’s about winning a championship. It’s not about caring about people’s lives, really.”
That’s why his stunned reaction to the GM’s attempted move to clear cap space at his expense seemed at least somewhat difficult to understand. Trouba knows that playing in the NHL, or any other major professional league, is to accept a cutthroat world. Right or wrong, players are discarded every season.
Likewise, reporting appears to paint a picture of Drury – who again, was simply attempting to do the job he was hired to – being caught off guard by Trouba’s refusal to simply acquiesce to the GM’s desire to get rid of him and go along with a trade elsewhere. It would seem that a front office would consider that Trouba could exercise his right to block the attempt to deal him, and have a Plan B that would involve working with player and agent on a possible solution – but one that could be resolved with the Rangers being able to clear the defender’s cap space prior to the start of free agency. The impression that’s left is that Drury overplayed his hand, thinking this would go as easily as the Goodrow transaction did, when in fact Trouba held considerably more leverage than Goodrow, the former’s family situation also acting as something of a no-move clause in that teams weren’t going to acquire a player who didn’t want to join them.
Both sides have made their beds here. Fans have sympathy for Trouba, but it’s foolish to believe that will go far. People who invest themselves financially and emotionally in their favorite teams are aware that other players have families too, and inconvenient, sudden and often-unexpected moves from one city to another are part of the price of playing top-level professional sports.
Player and team might be stuck with one another now, but perhaps it would have been best if both sides had found a way to dissolve the relationship. That would have bred acrimony; time will tell how much as compared to what Trouba staying on the roster this season will create. If youngster Braden Schneider remains ahead of Trouba on the right-side depth chart, the Rangers will again have a third-pair defenseman accounting for about 9 percent of their salary cap.
Trouba’s entirely legal act on behalf of his family could come with a cost. The strength of his conviction was the right thing for him; it also had consequences for his team. There’s also the question of whether he’ll be happy coming to work every day for an organization that tried to dump him before the season started.
Perhaps Trouba will find his game again in 2024-25, bringing the kind of physicality and leadership the Rangers need, playing an integral part in the Blueshirts making another deep playoff run, and all will be forgotten. If he doesn’t, and the Blueshirts struggle, will he become a face of the failure, as he was after they fell short this spring? Summer admiration for Trouba’s character could easily devolve into fall, winter and spring frustration whenever bad passes or missed assignments lead to goals against. The captain is bound to have less margin for error with the fanbase. That’s entirely unfair. It’s also reality.
A trade didn’t get done – one that might have ultimately benefited both parties. Perhaps it still will before the start of the season, but that seems unlikely at this point. If that proves to be the case, and Trouba remains in a Rangers sweater for 2024-25, surely he and Drury shouldn’t be surprised if the potential for a strained, distracted season for player, team, fans and front office rears its head.
