The Rangers made a pile of moves this offseason, but the one that keeps drawing praise is the trade that kicked the whole thing off — landing 25-year-old winger Pavel Dorofeyev.
New York walked into the summer holding draft capital and cap space, but the direction wasn’t obvious. This wasn’t a strong free-agency class, and a team coming off a last-place finish in the Eastern Conference had a real decision to make: retool on the fly or tear it down. Chris Drury’s front office chose to push forward, and the early returns have the Rangers looking like one of the league’s most improved teams.
Mark Lazerus and Shayna Goldman of The Athletic recently graded the Dorofeyev deal, and they handed New York an A-minus.
Why the Deal Grades So Well
Before the trade, plenty of people wondered whether a full rebuild was the smarter path. The Rangers wanted to compete, but they’d just finished dead last in the East, and the temptation to blow it up was real. Drury clearly had a different plan.
Dorofeyev directly addresses the team’s biggest problem. New York struggled to score at times last season, and a winger coming off a 37-goal year is exactly the kind of finisher that fixes that. He slots in as a genuine scoring upgrade rather than a depth piece.
The cost was steep: two first-round picks, including the No. 26 overall selection in 2026. The second first-rounder, headed out in 2028, is top-10 protected — and for a team fresh off a last-place finish, that protection matters. If the retool hits a snag and the Rangers land near the top of the draft again, they keep the pick.
That’s the balance The Athletic rewarded. New York filled its most glaring need with a 25-year-old scorer who should be a core piece for years, and it built in a safety net on the outgoing capital. For a front office that had to thread the needle between winning now and protecting the future, the Dorofeyev trade looks like the move that made the rest of the offseason work.
