Should the Rangers Make a Big Splash at the Deadline or Not?

There comes a time when every general manager ("GM"), no matter what sport, has to decide whether to be a buyer or seller at the trade deadline.  That question usually answers itself depending on where a team sits in the standings.  Once that answer is clear, as it is with this year's Ranger team, (with the most points in the East, they are obviously buyers) a GM, Glen Sather in the Rangers' case, must decide whether to truly shake things up and go for the Cup or to stand pat and be comfortable enough with his current roster to tweak a bit and nothing more.

What Sather decides to do before the trade deadline will likely determine whether the Rangers make a deep run in the playoffs or whether they fall meekly in the first or second round.  This Rangers team is clearly a close bunch with one specific purpose and one ideal.  Play for each other and play hard.  Any move to acquire a big-time scorer will likely cost the team at least one primary player off the current roster and a high end prospect and/or draft pick.  Sather should not do it.  He should go out and tweak, maybe upgrade any position where injuries could play a factor, but nothing more.

This team is not the 94' Stanley Cup winning Rangers.  That team had all-time greats, many players who though past their prime still did enough to contribute.  The Rangers sacrificed perhaps 10 years of competitiveness for that grasp at the Cup and thankfully they won.  In the process though, they gave up two players Doug Weight and Tony Amonte, who would have been first liners on the team for another decade.  That team had been close to the Cup before.  Two seasons before raising the Cup, the Messier led team won the President's trophy for most points in the league and had they gotten past Lemieux and Jagr they would very likely have won in 92'.  Two years later, it was clear to Neil Smith who and what was needed to make a deep playoff run.  He saw who failed two years earlier and he saw what caused that team's downfall.  He traded scorer Mike Gartner and replaced him with veteran grit and acquired other veteran types to supplement the stars he had in Messier, Leetch, Zubov and Graves.

Back to my main point.  Not to take anything away from the 11'-12' incarnation of the Rangers, but they are not the 94' Rangers.  First of all, they have not been close before.  This team has won 4 playoff games in the last 3 seasons.  Many of the primary players have one year of playoff experience.  There is no way to tell at this point who will be the Brad Marchand of this year's playoffs.  This team will not be  the most skilled in the playoffs but it will likely be the hardest working.  They will live and die though with the goaltending of Lundqvist.  Because Sather does not know how this team will respond in the playoffs, he owes it to the growth of the team and the organization to stand pat this year as Neil Smith did in 92' in order to determine what this team needs to go far going forward.  With the small window that exists in the current NHL salary cap era, it could be considered dangerous not to take advantage of a team as successful as this year's Rangers.  The fact is though, nearly all the important players on this year's team are signed for next season and if we are to believe that the "kids" as management likes to call them, are for real, then Sather owes this team a shot at the Cup without making a big splash at the deadline.  There is next year for this team and it will be advantageous in the long-term for the Rangers to stand pat like they did in 92' in order to build toward 94'.