The Rangers are running it back —one last time

The plan was not to run it back following the Rangers’ second six-game conference finals defeat within three years. The plan, in fact, was to clear cap space in order to remodel the club. 

Specifically, the plan was to move Jacob Trouba and his $8 million hit once the captain’s no-move clause became a 15-team no-trade clause on July 1, even if obligated them to retain up to 25 percent of the contract over its final two years. 

There were multiple interested parties. The Blueshirts were going to trade their captain. Until, that is, verifiable word circulated quickly through the league that Trouba had no interest in reporting if traded — anywhere. 

As The Post learned from impeccable sources and reported on July 1, Trouba’s original no-move clause was set to expire with his wife, Dr. Kelly Trouba, completing her medical residency at a New York hospital. But Dr. Trouba’s residency was deferred a year. The 30-year-old Rangers captain, who’d welcomed a son with his wife in January, made it clear to the proper authorities that he would not leave his family behind even while submitting his no-trade list that featured Detroit, which would have been his most likely destination. 

I think we all would like to believe that we’d sacrifice for our partner and family and put our career second. We all like to think we’d be coach Taylor if Tami Taylor were offered the job of a lifetime in Philadelphia. Trouba’s instincts are wholly admirable. 

But at the same time, Trouba effectively turned a five-year no-move into a six-year no-move. I guess the Rangers and GM Chris Drury could have challenged him and could have made this into a public spectacle but that would have been destructive. The Rangers made the best out of a sticky situation. 

There will be no issues within the room because of this. Trouba is an extremely popular captain. There is also no need for Drury or head coach Peter Laviolette to affirm No. 8’s place in the organization. There will be no friction because of this. They know what happened. 

Yet the moment a Trouba trade came off the board — and it happened no later than June 30 — the Rangers’ offseason plan changed on a dime. There wasn’t going to be enough space for the remodel that had initially been envisioned. Prospective free-agent signees had committed elsewhere. 

Trouba was going nowhere, management had no interest in trading Chris Kreider, whose no-move clause also turned into a limited no-trade. They were not asking Mika Zibanejad to waive his no-move clause. 

That is the anatomy of the decision to run it back. 

Which isn’t to say that the Rangers may benefit from Trouba’s decision. It is not cost-effective to have an $8M defenseman on the third pair, as Trouba currently projects, but the Blueshirts could not have a more formidable third-pair right defenseman than the captain, who is going to continue his role on the first unit of a penalty kill that ranked third in the NHL last year. 

There is no doubt that Trouba played on a broken foot during the playoffs, semantics aside. He was not himself. He could not move laterally. His flying leap over Martin Necas and interaction with Evan Rodrigues were aberrations. Players are generally hailed for playing the postseason with serious medical issues but for some reason, not Trouba. If he shouldn’t have been playing, that was on the coaching staff to determine, not the player. Imagine the captain — any captain — asking out? 

Again, too, Trouba’s leadership is an asset to the team, not a liability. A change in the captaincy was and is not needed. 

You know what, too, though, the plan changed because of the inability to trade Trouba but not exclusively so. Because the Rangers could have remodeled the team by moving on from Filip Chytil and constructing their third line with a big, physical, checking-type center who could help Zibanejad (and Vincent Trocheck) with matchups in the playoffs. 

Trading Chytil under his circumstances likely would have been nearly impossible. Which GM was going to trade an asset for a player who had just missed almost the entire year with a fourth suspected concussion? The GM who would be fired if there were a fifth one, that’s who. 

The Rangers could have bought out the remaining three years of Chytil’s contract at one-third, but, A) there is cutthroat and there is cruel; and, B) it would have been absurd to cut a (now) 25-year-old center loose while getting nothing in return before watching him ring up 75 points playing with Necas. 

This is going to be a very good team. But other than allowing for growth from young players such as K’Andre Miller, Will Cuylle, Braden Schneider, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere and Zac Jones, I just don’t see how management addressed their physical deficiencies that cost them in the Florida series and cost them in the Tampa Bay series two years ago. 

They’re still trying to win the Cup with three scoring lines and I don’t quite get it. But the roster can and probably will change considerably at the deadline, with Drury having used it all three years on the job to do pre-spring cleaning and remodeling. 

These are the 1997-98 NBA Chicago Bulls but without the five championships in the previous seven seasons. This is the Last Dance. 

This is the last time the Rangers are running it back.