With the Rangers struggling to get into any sort of a groove early on this season, GM Chris Drury and the front office sent a message to the group, putting a number of the teams longest-tenured players out there on the trade block.
Among them was defenseman and captain Jacob Trouba.
Trouba also found himself square in the middle of rumors earlier this offseason, but any potential talks were quickly put to rest by the 15-team no-trade clause in his contract which kicked in on July 1.
As a result Drury was forced to hold onto him with hopes that he’d turn things around, but with his late-season struggles carrying over to the beginning of this year, the veteran defenseman has found his name popping back up in rumors again.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Trouba said. “I’m happy to be here and focused on playing hockey. You can’t really control anything, I learned that throughout the summer. You just have to block all of it out and focus on playing hockey with this group.”
Trouba reportedly spoke with Drury about the report on Tuesday.
“It’s just part of the game,” he said. “My job is to play hockey, that’s what I’m here to do. I’m happy be here. I love this group. I love playing here. I think we’ve had a decent start to the season, we’ve hit a bit of a rough patch and we’ve got to work our way out of it.”
They’ll begin trying to try turning things around on the road Wednesday night against the Hurricanes.
Limiting the high-powered Carolina offense will certainly be a tall task for a defensive unit that’s allowed a whopping 14 goals and 132 shots on goal (44 shots per game) over their current three-game losing streak.
The dynamic duo of Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick have been their saving-grace on the backend all season, but Trouba knows that they need to clean things up moving forward.
“Times are tough right now, we have to dig deep and pull ourselves out of this,” he said. “We’re giving up too many Grade-A chances right now and we're depending on our goalies too much. That’s the obvious area we need to focus on starting in Carolina.”