How Rangers will approach NHL trade deadline

The Rangers are coming up on their fourth trade deadline since “The Letter,” which declared the official start of the organization’s rebuild, sent out on Feb. 8, 2018.

By now, the reconstruction has reached a point where the Blueshirts don’t fall into either the “Buyers” or “Sellers” categories that are commonly used to describe where franchises are in their pursuit of the Stanley Cup. They are somewhere in the middle, where they have accomplished their goal of stocking up on promising prospects and young players to build around, but are still lacking components that would make them legitimate contenders. It’s safe to assume that by Monday’s deadline, the Rangers won’t be making any bombshell deals like the one that sent former captain Ryan McDonagh and forward J.T. Miller to Tampa Bay in exchange for a 2018 first-round pick, a conditional second-round pick in 2019, a then-25-year-old Vlad Namestnikov (now in Detroit) and two prospects in defenseman Libor Hajek and center Brett Howden who are now part of the team’s active roster.