The Rangers probably aren’t going to be as young as you might expect, for much — if not most — of the rebuild will take place off-Broadway in places like Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, Lulea, Madison and Hartford.
So that means that while the likes of Vitali Kravtsov, Igor Shestyorkin, Nils Lundkvist, K’Andre Miller and, more likely than not, Libor Hajek, Ryan Lindgren and Brett Howden develop elsewhere, the Blueshirts of David Quinn will present largely the same cast of characters who were aboard the sinking ship for at least the final month of 2018-19.
The challenge, thus, is manifest for this group that will feature fewer young headliners than, say, the 2007-08 team did that had 22-year-old Ryan Callahan, 21-year-old Brandon Dubinsky, 23-year-old Dan Girardi, 21-year-old Marc Staal, 24-year-old Fedor Tyutin and 25-year-old Henrik Lundqvist in major roles.