The Rangers are staring at a what-if that changes the whole offseason conversation: what if Artemi Panarin never got away?
That’s the alternate timeline worth unpacking here. New York is now trying to make up for the production Panarin took with him, but there’s a real argument that the bigger story is what the Rangers would have had to give up just to keep him in the first place.
For one thing, the Pavel Dorofeyev trade likely never happens. The Rangers simply wouldn’t have had the room to carry both Panarin and Dorofeyev without clearing out a significant chunk of cap space.
Dorofeyev hasn’t played a game in New York yet, so it’s impossible to say flat-out that bringing him in was a worse move than keeping Panarin. Still, if the Rangers had passed on that trade, they would have preserved a lot of assets they already sent out the door.
That’s where the ripple effect gets interesting. Those saved pieces could have been used in a bigger swing, maybe even for someone like Dylan Larkin. But until the final price tag for Larkin is known, there’s no way to know whether the Rangers would have had enough to get that deal across the line.
The Panarin move also fits into a broader reset. The Rangers’ veteran core has been slipping, and while those players are still productive, the sense around the team was that a major shakeup was overdue. Trading Panarin sent that message loud and clear.
Even with Mike Sullivan in the mix, the Rangers couldn’t turn their season around. Keeping Panarin probably would have kept some of the same issues in place.
He was unhappy and wanted a change of scenery, and he got it in Los Angeles. New York, meanwhile, got a return that didn’t exactly light the world on fire.
But the cap space from that deal gave the Rangers a path to target Dorofeyev. If the 25-year-old keeps scoring the way he did in Vegas, the whole debate around the Panarin trade could fade pretty quickly. If he doesn’t, the questions about whether moving Panarin was worth it are only going to get louder.
Either way, the trade was always coming. The real question is what the Rangers lost, and what else they might have been able to do, by not keeping Panarin around.
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