The Rangers Finished Last in the East With a Top-Five Power Play. Then They Paid Two Firsts and $77 Million for a Power-Play Specialist.

On the first night of the draft, the New York Rangers sent the 26th pick, the 92nd pick and a conditional 2028 first-round pick to the Vegas Golden Knights for Pavel Dorofeyev. Four days later they signed him for seven years and $77 million, an $11 million cap hit that runs through 2032-33 for a 25-year-old who was a third-round pick and had been a full-time NHL player for exactly two seasons. He scored 37 goals last year and 12 more in 22 playoff games on the way to the Stanley Cup Final, and if you stop reading at those numbers the price makes sense.

Do not stop there. The Rangers finished 2025-26 with 77 points, last in the Eastern Conference, and they did it with the fifth-best power play in the league. What sank them was everything that happened at even strength, where they were a 48 percent team by expected goals, 22nd of 32, and generated the sixth-fewest chances in hockey. They have now spent the summer's biggest asset on a player whose value lives almost entirely on the power play, and whose even-strength scoring rate is identical to that of the $8.5 million centre they already had.

Where the 37 goals actually came from

Nineteen of Dorofeyev's 37 goals came on the 5-on-4 power play, and a 20th came with a different man advantage. That is a 51 percent power-play share, and among the 32 players who scored 33 or more goals last season only Wyatt Johnston matched it. The league's other high-volume scorers do their work at 5-on-5: Cole Caufield scored 33 of his 51 there, Tage Thompson 31 of 40, Dylan Guenther 28 of 40. Dorofeyev scored 15.

Per minute it looks worse, because he played a lot at 5-on-5, 1,111 minutes, and produced little in them. He scored 0.81 goals per 60 at 5-on-5 and 1.73 points per 60. Among the 33-goal club that puts him with Kirill Kaprizov and Mika Zibanejad on goals and with Johnston and Steven Stamkos on points, at the bottom of the group. Caufield scored at more than double his 5-on-5 rate. Guenther, Thompson, Cutter Gauthier and Anthony Mantha, none of whom cost $11 million, all did too.

This is not a knock on the power play work, which was real. Vegas had the sixth-best power play in the league and Dorofeyev was its trigger man, planted at the left circle with Jack Eichel feeding him, and 19 goals from that spot is elite finishing. But it is a specific skill that depends on a specific setup, and the setup stays in Nevada. The Rangers are buying the finisher and hoping the structure comes with him.

They already had this player

The comparison the Rangers should have run before signing the cheque is with their own roster. Mika Zibanejad scored 34 goals last season, 16 of them on the power play, a 47 percent share. At 5-on-5 he scored 0.80 goals per 60 and 1.85 points per 60. Those are Dorofeyev's numbers with the decimal places moved. Zibanejad is 33 and Dorofeyev is 25, which matters, and Dorofeyev was a better play-driver at 5-on-5 by a clear margin. But as a scorer, the Rangers have paid a first, a third, a conditional first and $11 million a year to acquire a second copy of the profile they already own, on a power play that only has one left circle.

There is a version of this where the two share the top unit, Dorofeyev on the left flank and Zibanejad in the bumper or on the right, and the Rangers' power play goes from fifth to first. That is plausible. It is also a solution to a problem the Rangers did not have. A 24.7 percent power play scored plenty. The team lost because it was outplayed for the 48 minutes a night that were not on the man advantage, and no amount of power-play scoring fixes a 5-on-5 team that generated 154 expected goals at even strength, sixth-fewest in the league.

The part of the trade that was right

Credit where it is owed, because the same week produced the best piece of business the Rangers did all summer. Vincent Trocheck went to the Utah Mammoth on July 1 for Sean Durzi, prospect Cole Beaudoin and a 2027 third-round pick, and the numbers say New York should have paid Utah to take him. Trocheck was on the ice for a 43 percent expected-goal share at 5-on-5 last season, the worst of any Rangers forward, generating 2.11 expected goals per 60 and conceding 2.78. He is 33, signed at $5.625 million through 2028-29, and his 53 points came with his lowest shot total since 2014-15. Moving that contract for a useful defenceman and a prospect is the kind of trade that quietly improves a team by subtraction.

The Rangers also moved Will Borgen, a 46 percent defenceman, to Boston for picks, and bought Marcus Pettersson from Vancouver for a conditional 2030 first. Pettersson's raw numbers on the Canucks look horrific, minus-28 at 5-on-5 and minus-58 across all situations, but that was the worst team in the league by a distance and his 2.61 expected goals against per 60 was the best of any Vancouver defenceman. He is a reasonable bet on suppression, at $5.5 million through 2030-31, and a first-round pick four years out is cheap for it.

So the summer is not a disaster. The Trocheck trade cost nothing and fixed something, and the first-round pick spent on Pettersson bought a skill the Rangers lacked. The problem is that the other two firsts, and the $77 million attached to them, went on the wrong thing.

What $11 million is buying

Two more numbers on Dorofeyev, because a seven-year contract needs to survive them. First, he shot 16.1 percent last season on 230 shots. His previous two seasons were 13.8 and 13.4, and the league's forwards as a group shot 13.0. His individual expected goals, the number MoneyPuck assigns to the quality of his shots, was 30.8. He scored 37. Six goals of last season's total were shooting luck, and shooting luck is the least reliable thing in hockey to pay for in advance.

Second, the shots themselves went down. He took 254 in 2024-25 and 230 last season, in more ice time, and scored two more goals. That is the signature of a player whose conversion went up while his volume went down, which is exactly the profile you would not want to lock in at a career-high rate. At 13.5 percent on 230 shots he is a 31-goal scorer. At 13.5 percent on a Rangers power play that does not have Eichel on it, he is something less than that.

None of which makes him a bad player. His 56 percent expected-goal share at 5-on-5 was among the best on this list, level with Kucherov and McDavid, and on a Rangers team whose best forward was at 53, that matters. He will help. The question is whether a 30-goal winger who helps mostly on the power play is worth $11 million a year, on a team that needs its next $11 million to buy even-strength play, and the numbers say no.

The case for it, stated fairly

Dorofeyev is 25, and 25-year-olds who score 37 goals do not come to market often. The Rangers were last in the East and cannot draft their way to relevance in Manhattan; the picks they gave up would have been players in 2029, and this is a player now. The playoff run was real, 12 goals in 22 games against the best teams in the league, and playoff finishing is the scarcest commodity in hockey. If the shooting percentage holds and the power play stays elite, the contract is fair from year one and cheap by year four as the cap rises. That is the bet, and there are worse ones.

What it means

The Rangers' summer will be judged on Dorofeyev's goal total, and if he scores 35 on Broadway the contract will look fine in the papers. Look instead at where the goals come from and what happens in the minutes between power plays. If he scores 20 at 5-on-5 and the Rangers' even-strength share climbs toward 52 percent, then New York found a driver and this piece was too harsh. If he scores 15 at 5-on-5 again while the power play carries him, then the Rangers will have spent $77 million to be a slightly better version of the team that finished last. The 2028 first they sent to Vegas is top-10 protected, which is the one small mercy in that scenario: if this goes badly enough, they at least keep the pick.