Rangers GM shifts some pieces as lost season winds down

The pieces continue to move around, well after the Rangers began to lose en masse, well after management publicly declared its intention to rebuild with a letter to the fans on Feb. 8, and well after the Feb. 26 trade deadline.

Yet Jeff Gorton, the man running the show, has not seen this as a hard time for the franchise. Instead, this is all part of the general manager’s bigger plan to get the Rangers back on the winning track.

“I don’t look at it as a tough time, I look at it as an opportunity for us to move forward and rebuild and get some young players in here and see how they are,” Gorton said during an impromptu press conference after Tuesday’s practice in Tarrytown. “As far as where we’re at, I think we just started the process, which was get some key young players and some of the moves we made. You know, we have a lot of work to do and that’s what we plan on doing as we head to the offseason.”

As Gorton’s team prepared for Wednesday night’s second leg of a home-and-home with the Capitals in Washington, he sent rookie goalie Alexandar Georgiev back to AHL Hartford. That is where the 22-year-old likely will play out the season after an eye-opening NHL-debut run of nine starts (10 appearances) with a .918 save percentage — a number sorely adjusted after his worst performance of the bunch, giving up three goals on six shots in the opening 8:54 of Monday night’s 4-2 loss to the Capitals at the Garden.

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With starter Henrik Lundqvist set to return Wednesday, the Rangers figured it was best to send Georgiev back to the Wolf Pack. His audition, however, put the undrafted kid from Bulgaria right in the mix for the backup role next season.

“He’s proven himself well, he’s been a good find for us, good story,” Gorton said. “I’d hate to say we made any decisions for next year, but he certainly put himself in the conversation.”

It was also announced that Kevin Shattenkirk, who was the big-name signing for Gorton last summer, when the defenseman took a hometown discount on a four-year, $26.6 million deal, was going to be shut down for the rest of the season rather than try to push a return from knee injury. Shattenkirk had surgery Jan. 22 to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee, and in recent weeks had been skating hard with the hope of returning.

“It doesn’t make any sense now,” Gorton said. “As we’re approaching the end of the season, six games to go, [we] thought that the risk isn’t worth it at this point.”

Nor did Gorton find it worth the risk to burn the first year of the entry-level deals for his first-round picks from last year’s draft, Lias Andersson (No. 7 overall) and Filip Chytil (No. 21). Chytil made the team and played two games at the start of the season, but he spent the majority of the year with Hartford before both he and Andersson were called up Sunday.

They joined the lineup for Monday’s game and had quite the collaborative performance, with Andersson, 19, scoring his first goal in his NHL debut and Chyitl, 18, getting his first point with an assist. Now begins the process of seeing how the centers can assimilate to the NHL, and where they might project for next season.

“So far, so good,” was Gorton’s assessment. “I think their energy is good, their skill level is good. They fit in pretty well.”

The trades of Ryan McDonagh, Rick Nash, J.T. Miller, Michael Grabner and Nick Holden brought back a bevy of prospects and picks. Gorton holds three first-rounders and two in each of the second and third rounds in the June 22 draft. There are also a few roster players who still could be had for the right price.

Gorton had a pretty straightforward answer when asked if he was planning on remaining active with his personnel before the start of next season.

“I’m not the only one that decides that, there are other teams involved. But we’ll certainly be involved,” he said. “We’re going to try to improve our team any way we can. We’re going to look at every avenue we can to help as we go forward.”