Colin Stephenson: Trocheck's time with Rangers likely down to matter of days
New York Rangers center Vincent Trocheck looks on against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the third period of Saturday's game at Madison Square Garden. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
If Saturday was Vincent Trocheck’s last game in a Rangers uniform, it was a heckuva way to go out.
It began before the opening faceoff, when his line got the start. Normally, it’s the Mika Zibanejad line that starts the game, but this time it was Trocheck’s line, with wingers Alexis Lafreniere and Will Cuylle. That gave the Madison Square Garden crowd, which was well aware Trocheck may be traded before Friday’s deadline, the chance to show their appreciation with very warm applause when he was introduced.
It ended when Trocheck scored the only goal in the shootout, providing the winner in the Rangers’ 3-2 victory over the Penguins. After that, the crowd chanted “USA! USA!’’ in a nod to Trocheck being part of the gold medal-winning USA Olympic team.
Rangers and USA coach Mike Sullivan said he didn’t hear the chants — he was too busy trying to figure out who was going next in the shootout, he said — but when told about them after the game, Sullivan said, “It’s really cool.’’
But now comes the sobering part: Trocheck’s time with the Rangers is likely down to just a matter of days, and it’s possible he may already have played his final game in a Blueshirt. With only two games left before the deadline, Monday at home against Columbus and Thursday at home against Toronto, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be held out of the lineup from one or both of them “for roster management,’’ to guard against a potential injury that would scuttle a trade.
And then he’ll be traded to a Stanley Cup contender (Minnesota, perhaps? Or back to Carolina, maybe?) for a package of young players and/or high draft picks as part of the Rangers’ “retool.’’ He might not be the only one leaving, but he’d certainly be the biggest name, after Artemi Panarin was traded to the L.A. Kings before the Olympic break.
In the happy locker room Saturday, the topic of the looming trade deadline wasn’t a fun one for players to contemplate. Zibanejad, who scored a goal in the game (off an assist from Trocheck), said it’s not something the players talk about much.
“I don't think it's been a lot of talk about it, or a lot of time to talk about it,’’ he said. “I think it's just been, we played Thursday [an overtime loss to Philadelphia] and we're playing a 12:30 game today. So I think the focus is just on what we can control, or what we have ahead of us, in terms of the next day and the day that we have in front of us. No, no thinking or talking about [the deadline] that much.’’
Trocheck wasn’t available in the locker room after the game to talk about the win, or his shootout goal, or the “USA’’ chants, or the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and 10-minute misconduct penalty he got in the first period, or his future. But in the postgame locker room at UBS Arena on Jan. 28, the day Panarin was first held out of the lineup for a game against the Islanders before he was traded, Trocheck said he hadn’t been walking around on eggshells waiting to be traded.
“You can't look at it like that,’’ he said. “You can't go about your day being scared of what's gonna happen next. You gotta . . . embrace any moment that you have together and love everybody in this locker room and cherish every second that we have together, every time we're on the ice together.’’
If his Rangers career is already over, it ends with 85 goals, 238 points, 201 penalty minutes, an average time on ice of 20 minutes, 40 seconds per game in 291 games. And he won 58% of his faceoffs in his nearly four seasons here. The 32-year-old, a 13-year veteran who is under contract for three more seasons at a very reasonable $5.625 million salary-cap hit, will be a fine addition for the team that gets him, and he should bring back a nice package for the retooling (definitely not rebuilding, wink-wink) Rangers.
And Saturday’s game will have been a very nice and fitting farewell.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
