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Rangers defenseman K\u2019Andre Miller at practice. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\nThis was Dallas in June 2018, four months after The Letter, with the Rangers holding three first-round draft selections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At ninth overall with their own pick, the Blueshirts drafted Vitali Kravtsov.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At 22nd overall, moving up with a second trade in using the selection acquired from Boston in the Rick Nash deal, the Blueshirts drafted K\u2019Andre Miller.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And at 28th overall with the pick acquired from the Lightning in the Ryan McDonagh-J.T. Miller exchange, the Blueshirts drafted Nils Lundkvist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, after Miller\u2019s trade Tuesday to Carolina for a 2026 conditional first-rounder, a 2026 second-rounder and 22-year-old righty defenseman Scott Morrow, not one of these first-rounders remains Rangers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lundkvist was the first to go, sent to Dallas in September 2022 in exchange for a 2023 first-rounder after the Swede had demanded a trade because he thought he\u2019d be blocked on the depth chart that featured Adam Fox, Jacob Trouba and Braden Schneider on the right side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rangers defenseman K\u2019Andre Miller at practice. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
The Rangers later sent that first-rounder to St. Louis on Feb. 9, 2023, to acquire rental properties Vlad Tarasenko and Nikko Mikkola. Both left as free agents that summer after the team\u2019s first-round defeat to the Devils.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kravtsov, a soap opera from the start, played 48 games for the Rangers, recording 10 points (5-5) before he was shipped to Vancouver around the 2023 deadline for a seventh-round draft pick and William Lockwood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miller played 368 games wearing the Blueshirt, 261 of which he was paired with Trouba on the club\u2019s second pair beginning the second week of his rookie 2020-21 season. The 6-foot-5 defenseman could be a force at both ends of the ice, using his reach to make up for a lack of physicality in his own end while able to join the rush at will.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Defenseman K\u2019Andre Miller is heading to the Hurricanes in a trade. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n
Miller\u2019s ceiling seemed as high as the ones in pre-World War II apartment buildings lining the Upper West Side. But after ascending under Gerard Gallant\u2019s two-year tenure behind the bench, Miller regressed in each of the past two seasons with Peter Laviolette as the head coach and Phil Housley as the defensive coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No. 79 became increasingly erratic and was prone to critical mistakes under pressure both on his reads and while handling the puck. Of course, every single defenseman regressed last season, and essentially every veteran regressed as well. There were issues that were far beyond Miller \u2014 who recorded 27 points (7-20), and was on for 62 goals for and 66 against with an xGF of 45.93 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead the expert take on the Blueshirts\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Larry Brooks’ Inside the Rangers, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
But GM Chris Drury was committed to changing the chemistry within the room. The Rangers were not going to commit long term on Miller, who was coming up on restricted free agency. And with cap space at a premium, the 25-year-old became the club\u2019s most attractive trade commodity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After having talked with several teams, Drury zeroed in on Carolina and completed the sign-and-trade after Miller agreed to an eight-year deal with an AAV of $7.5 million per.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seven years ago, the Rangers added Kravtsov, Miller and Lundkvist. They were going to be part of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, they are all in the Rangers\u2019 past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was Dallas in June 2018, four months after The Letter, with the Rangers holding three first-round draft…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[13725,4348,1302,293,8993,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-31208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-chris-drury","9":"tag-kandre-miller","10":"tag-new-york-rangers","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-draft","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114780812354950665","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}