Would a J.T. Miller Trade Fix the Rangers' Problems at Center?
With the Rangers struggling for months now, there is general alignment on what—and who—are the problems. Jacob Trouba and Kaapo Kakko were merely the early departures in what is expected to be a mass exodus for a roster that has largely stayed the same the last few seasons.
Assigning blame and tearing down the walls is the easy part of a roster restructuring. The Rangers aren't headed for a rebuild but this is a team missing key pieces at prominent positions. Mika Zibanejad's sharp decline and Vincent Trocheck's return to reality leave Head Coach Peter Laviolette with zero answers at first-line center. Solutions are hard to come by. There aren't many high-caliber centers and the teams that have them don't typically let them get away.
The Rangers may hope that the answer to turbulence in Manhattan may be friction elsewhere. General Manager Chris Drury has been after J.T. Miller for multiple years. A fracture between Miller and Elias Pettersson has made things uncomfortable in Vancouver and the Canucks may be forced to deal one or the other.
Now, a return to New York for Miller feels like a possibility rather than a daydream. The 31-year-old would undoubtedly be a big swing on talent and would change the locker room dynamic. But is Miller a true solution as a first-line center? Under what conditions would a move make sense for the Rangers?
What Miller Could Bring to the Rangers
Miller is one of the best offensive producers in the league. Over the previous three seasons, he ranked 10th among all NHLers by points, with 285 in 242 games.
The American is dynamic with the puck in the offensive zone. A dual threat who leans playmaker, Miller is at his best when he's making plays in motion. What the Rangers presumably like, though, is that he is not only a perimeter player. Yes, Miller can create from the outside, but he also has no problems crashing the net and fighting for ugly goals. He finds rebounds and deflections.
With Chris Kreider off his game and potentially on the way out, the Rangers could use some more chaos from a high-caliber player around the net front. In those regards, Miller does match first-line billing.
He undoubtedly would bring a different type of persona to a Rangers locker room that has gone stale. Miller is very vocal and carries himself with a certain arrogance that, in the right moments, can bring life to an arena. Even when the Rangers were at their best last season, the makeup of team leadership was calm and quiet, even if confident. Now that everyone's gone downhill without much pushback from team leadership, there is room for someone who could come in and shake things up.
Different Player, Same Problems?
A "grass is always greener" dynamic is at full throttle among the New York fanbase at the moment where seemingly every player in-house is irredeemable and any big addition who would shake up the status quo is, therefore, perceived as a solution.
In reality, it's not clear that Miller would change too much about what's wrong in New York. The best version of this team, such as the one that won the Presidents' Trophy last season, is still a heavily flawed one in critical areas. They are on their heels at five-on-five. They struggle to move play into the offensive zone and bleed chances defensively. The team lacked a true marquee first-line center who could anchor the team in most areas of the game.
Miller may have been 10th in points the previous three seasons, but 43.1 percent of that production came on the power play. At five-on-five, Miller drops down to 33rd among all NHLers over that span. Keep in mind, too, that he created much of that offense either in Elias Pettersson's shadow as a second-line center or shifted to the wing.
Miller fits much of the Rangers' already existing profile, too, in that he is an offensive zone creator rather than a significant driver of play. He is fantastic at generating offense past the blue line, and his cycle offense may indeed bring something new to a one-and-done group in New York, but he's nothing special in terms of helping his team establish possession in the offensive zone in the first place. The Rangers are desperate for excellence in terms of winning possession on the forecheck, creating zone entries, or retrieving pucks and establishing the breakout. Miller has varying degrees of competency in those areas but he's nowhere close to a focal point in any.
The biggest worry, though, has to be Miller's defensive game. At his best moments, he merely keeps his head above water. More often, he is a net-negative defensively. Maybe Miller can give the Rangers first-line firepower offensively but gives the Rangers similar issues as they have had with Zibanejad when it came with trying to match a Sasha Barkov or shut down a Jack Hughes.
A Volatile Player for an Uncertain Environment
And this all supposes a highly functioning Miller. Rangers fans have harangued Mika Zibanejad for being seemingly disengaged and completely absent at five-on-five, and that's mostly fair. But what of Miller this season? He has just one goal at even strength this season and seven total points at five-on-five in his last 20 games.
Inconsistencies have plagued Miller his whole career and that dial has been turned up to maximum this season. He's prone to lackadaisical or unfocused shifts with either haphhazard attention to defensive duties or careless turnovers in vulnerable spots.
And of course, the entire reason Vancouver might trade him is because of irreconcilable differences in the locker room. Miller may inject some passion into a very vanilla Rangers locker room. Or, he could be a headache in an already uneasy team atmosphere.
A Fit for New York... in Certain Circumstances
Looking for a cure-all solution to the Rangers' catastrophic collapse is a futile task. The problems are widespread and deep to the degree that one player cannot come in and fix them alone.
At the same time, this is a team with finite resources. Management has a handful of attractive pieces to move in the way of roster players and prospects and somewhat limited draft capital. If Drury is going to empty the coffers, he cannot afford to get anything less than a franchise-changing player.
It's hard to envision Miller as that player. He comes with major question marks that, even if answered favorably, paint him more as an opportunistic offensive producer rather than a first-line center that Stanley Cup teams are accustomed to in the forms of either elite offensive play drivers or 200-foot bulls.
What's more, the big-picture worry for the Rangers is that their contention window is rapidly closing and they are tied to players with big cap hits whose declines are either here or imminent. Miller is a soon-to-be 32-year-old who holds an $8.5 million cap hit through 2030. To the extent that he addresses that problem for the Rangers, it's only by kicking the can down the road a year or two.
If the Rangers can convince Vancouver to swap problems then a move could make a lot of sense. Maybe Zibanejad would welcome a fresh start and a chance to become a second-line center behind Pettersson in Vancouver. In such a case, taking a chance on Miller bringing new life to the Rangers suddenly looks very appealing.
If nothing else, Miller's contract would offer the Rangers more flexibility down the road. Both carry the same $8.5 million cap hit for five more seasons. But whereas Zibanejad has full trade protection until the 2030 trade deadline, Miller's full no-trade clause turns into a 15-team no-trade clause in July 2027. Furthermore, Miller's contract is far less laden with signing bonuses, making him a buyout option down the line, whereas Zibenajad's contract is virtually buyout-proof.
Miller's full control of his destiny at the current moment may too benefit the Rangers. If the atmosphere in Vancouver becomes untenable and the Rangers are the only true suitor for whom Miller is willing to waive his protection, the Blueshirts may be able to acquire him without giving up too many significant assets. If a Miller trade leaves the Rangers with enough key trade pieces remaining to pursue other much-needed additions, then he's certainly worth the gamble on talent. There are certain scenarios in which a Miller trade makes a whole lot of sense for New York.
Overall, though, Miller alone is not enough to overcome the Rangers' bevy of issues or even their need for a true marquee first-line center for the long term. If he is Drury's idea of the big fix to the team's foundation worth moving the house for, then it will only serve to exacerbate the team's decline to longer-term irrelevancy.
