Why Rangers desperately need to re-acquire J.T. Miller, even if trade is long shot

Despite the juicy drama swirling around the Vancouver Canucks’ two star centers, there’s no indication at this point that the club is prepared to part ways with former New York Rangers first-rounder J.T. Miller.

Even if the Canucks were looking to move on from the uber-talented 31-year-old, acquiring him might not be the best idea for any team, given the red flags surrounding Miller throughout his 13-year career. That doesn’t change the fact that Miller’s demeanor is exactly what the crashing Rangers need right now.

The allegedly fraught relationship between Miller and teammate Elias Pettersson, the 26-year-old pivot who was the fifth overall pick in the 2017 NHL Draft, is again front-page news in the highly pressurized NHL media environment in Vancouver. Beat reporters asked both players about the subject recently and received annoyed/angry/uncomfortable responses. Other League insiders picked up the story and it became a primary topic on prominent podcasts, to the point that it’s perhaps the biggest narrative in the NHL at the moment.

Acquiring J.T. Miller not easy solution for Rangers, but right one

The telling of it generally goes like this: Miller’s smoldering intensity to win and boldness in calling out teammates who aren’t working hard and performing up to his standards of commitment, which has rubbed teammates the wrong way throughout his journey from the Rangers to the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Canucks, is clashing badly with the personality of Pettersson, who’s also an intense competitor but can be sensitive and is more reserved in his interactions.

Fueling the fire this time in a story that’s hardly new, Pettersson recorded 15 points in 10 games during Miller’s recent leave of absence from the Canucks for personal reasons. In the first six games after Miller’s return Dec. 12, Pettersson was without a point, ending that drought with two goals in a 4-3 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Dec. 23.

It could of course be a total coincidence, but the sudden collapse of Pettersson’s production is so stark, the timing of it so convenient, that it can’t simply be dismissed out of hand as nothing.

Endless dissecting of the situation is largely counterproductive, even if it makes for good gossip in NHL circles. For Miller’s original team, however, there must be at least some curiosity over whether the fiery persona that is potentially making big waves in the Pacific Northwest might play perfectly on Broadway right about now.

There are many reasons for the Rangers’ stunning collapse from 2023-24 Presidents’ Trophy winners to easy opponent that might miss the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Among the biggest is the complete disappearance of competitiveness, accountability, physicality and desire.

Importing someone like Miller, who by his own admission wore out his welcome as a young player with Rangers after they selected him with the No. 15 pick in the 2011 draft, would be anything but a perfect solution. It might even make the situation in the Rangers’ listless locker room worse. A team with Miller on the roster, however, doesn’t lack for any of those elements that the Blueshirts failed to exhibit at all this season.

The Rangers are a flat-lined, vanilla outfit that’s predictably failing in a fast, physical sport marked by emotion, intensity and investment in the group. Unless fourth-liner Matt Rempe’s eventual return from an eight-game suspension injects all of that into this team in spades, there’s little reason to believe that anyone currently on the roster is going to be able to change it.

Vincent Trocheck, one of the few Rangers who plays with any edge, questioned his team’s heart after an embarrassing 5-0 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Monday, a game in which the Blueshirts were banged around and bullied throughout. Trocheck, though, isn’t Miller, who through expectations for himself has grown from a promising but frustrating prospect over nearly six seasons in New York, to a 100-point force in Vancouver whose heavy and versatile game has carried him into the upper echelon of the League.

Like the Canucks, the Rangers have been engulfed by bad vibes all season, in their case stemming from supposed anger toward general manager Chris Drury’s disposing of the contracts of veterans Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba. The perceived air of grievance has been a never-ending storyline in another high-pressure media market, so the negativity has spiraled and the Rangers are 4-13-0 since a 12-4-1 start.

J.T. Miller’s demanding ways could change Rangers culture for better

These Rangers are meek. They are dominated physically on a regular basis and can’t get to the front of the net at all. They barely defend, be it off the rush or in their own zone.

Given all of that, would Drury or coach Peter Laviolette be upset if Miller was demanding and confronting teammates in New York over these issues, rather than doing so in Vancouver right now? If he was using his 6-foot-1, 218-pound frame to bull his way to the goalmouth in a Blueshirt, rather than a Canucks sweater?

Despite all of his baggage, obtaining Miller would likely be a pipe dream for Drury, and perhaps any GM. In Miller, Pettersson and star defenseman Quinn Hughes, Vancouver possesses three of perhaps the top 10 players in the NHL, a trio that powered the Canucks within one game of the Western Conference Final last season. Surely Vancouver wants to take another run at the Stanley Cup with those players leading the way. Breaking up the band would mean the relationship between Miller and Pettersson has become so toxic that it’s dragging down the team.

Additionally, making the money work will be difficult would be difficult for the Rangers, even with the subtraction of the cap hits of Goodrow and Trouba that saved them nearly $12 million this season and next. They still face cap pressures, with Igor Shesterkin’s huge extension kicking in in 2025-26, the need to re-sign other key pieces and Drury’s desire (requirement?) to make a big splash as he works to retool a flawed, troubled roster.

Miller makes $8 million annually through the 2029-30 season.

The Rangers would have to send significant assets the other way, perhaps starting with young forward Alexis Lafreniere and including some other players and/or draft picks. They would surely like to have underachieving center Mika Zibanejad be a part of the deal, but Zibanejad has a full no-move clause, and the Canucks aren’t likely to be interested in an apparently declining player who has five seasons left at an $8.5 million cap hit after 2024-25.

If the Rangers were able to somehow acquire Miller without Zibanejad, that would potentially leave the club with the NHL’s most expensive third-line center. That kind of roster construction is unsustainable.

It would also displace center Filip Chytil, if he wasn’t already part of the return for Miller.