These are dicey days for general manager Jeff Gorton, who is stuck in a situation not entirely of his own making as the Rangers operate in a time warp of suspended animation between last Thursday’s planting of the For Sale sign outside the team room and the Feb. 26 trade deadline.
While the team — which features one handful of players caught in limbo and another handful of neophytes — runs into the kind of stark reality provided at Barclays Center on Thursday in a 3-0 shutout defeat to an Islanders team that entered the match saddled with the worst goals-against average in the NHL.
In a perfect world, Gorton would be able to create an artificial deadline and market of his own making to prompt immediate auctions for headline trade prospects Rick Nash, Ryan McDonagh, Mats Zuccarello and Michael Grabner instead of waiting for the market to develop and come to him over the next 11 days.
The Yankees, you will recall, jumped the market in dealing Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs six days before the 2016 MLB deadline. But the fact is GM Brian Cashman had a willing partner in Theo Epstein, the Chicago GM who was prepared to part with ace prospect Gleyber Torres among a group of four without stringing things along until the last minute.
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Epstein knew who he wanted, knew who the Yankees demanded in return and jumped, unwilling to take the risk of being outbid for the lefty closer. Three months later, the Cubs were rewarded for their aggressiveness by winning the World Series for the first time since 1908.
The Yankees were not only rewarded with the prize in the package, they avoided a week of discomfort in which then-manager Joe Girardi would have had to face decisions about exposing Chapman. That scenario did play out with Andrew Miller, whom Girardi did not use in his final three games in pinstripes before he was shipped to Cleveland.
Now, hockey players are not relief pitchers. If they’re in, they’re in. And so, as Gorton weighs interest in Nash, he is in the lineup, susceptible to injury. As the GM fields offers for Grabner, he is in the lineup, vulnerable to mishap. The same applies to Zuccarello.
McDonagh is another story, sidelined from his fourth straight Thursday night in Brooklyn with an unspecified upper-body injury, but the same risks will apply presuming No. 27 is cleared to return before the deadline.
This must be a strange time for the athletes, operating in a dimension of doubt as their current team’s season slips away. Nash told The Post on Saturday he felt “weird” in the aftermath of being asked for his trade-approved list. The other guys on the block must feel the same way as they are constant objects of conjecture. No matter how professional, these men are not robots.
Nash was one of the most involved Rangers in this one, as his line with Zuccarello and Mika Zibanejad paired with defensemen Brady Skjei and Neal Pionk to ring up lopsided possession numbers clocking in at over 80 percent against the John Tavares-Anders Lee-Josh Bailey unit. And David Desharnais, who will make a solid rental depth guy for a contender, poked his nose in all night with linemates Jimmy Vesey and Jesper Fast.
Still, as the clock ticks toward the deadline, nothing good can happen for the Rangers if the process drags out. There is always the possibility of injury. There is always the possibility of another player, and perhaps equally or more attractive, becoming available.
The Predators are known to be keen on Nash, but general manager David Poile has obviously not yet offered winger Eeli Tolvanen, the 30th-overall selection in last June’s draft, as part of the package to land No. 61. So Gorton waits for an offer he cannot refuse and attempts to put some pressure on Poile, but while he attempts to apply leverage, there is always the chance a non-rental such as Jeff Skinner, Max Pacioretty or Mike Hoffman could fall into Nashville’s lap.
Gorton has blue-chippers here and he is right to set the bar high in working the market. He should hold out for premium value for Nash, who is coveted by more than one team. He should hold out for premium value for McDonagh, who could well be the piece that elevates Boston or Tampa Bay over the other and on the path to the Stanley Cup. Those pieces shouldn’t come cheap. Gorton should not settle.
But it would sure benefit the GM and the Rangers if he could find the equivalent of a Theo Epstein out there on the NHL landscape.