Don’t laugh at the title. Don’t. Don’t do it. Yes we are writing a Jacob Trouba report card. Trouba played 24 games with the Rangers last season before being traded to Anaheim, and that’s about the 1/4 of the season threshold that I just kind of made up right now. So, yes there is a Jacob Trouba report card. And believe it or not, his 2024-2025 season with the Rangers wasn’t that bad.
Trouba didn’t put up anything special on the scoreboard with just six assists in those 24 games, but his overall play actually started off pretty nicely. He and Braden Schneider formed a solid second pair while K’Andre Miller and Adam Fox were wonderful as a top pair.
The Schneider-Trouba pairing was actually good, albeit in a small sample, as a shutdown pair. They put up a solid 52% shot share, a whopping 59% xG share, and another very good 56% high-danger shot share. That’s very good! And the kicker is both of them had worse numbers apart. It’s almost like us saying Trouba needs a defense-first partner like Schneider for 3 years made sense!
Trouba’s overall numbers were not good for the rest of his tenure, mostly because Peter Laviolette shoehorned Ryan Lindgren back into the lineup as the 1LD instead of just letting the new top-four cook. That’s not Trouba’s fault of course, and nor should that impact how we grade him out. It’s just an interesting little tidbit that might make you think differently about his *on ice* play in his final 24 games with the Rangers.
Unfortunately for our Jacob Trouba report card, very little of his on ice play is going to impact his grade. After the now infamous failed trade with Detroit and equally infamous trade memo, it was clear Trouba was a lame duck captain that no longer even wanted to get his team going. Those feelings impacted the locker room and it was clear Trouba had to go.
I can’t fault Trouba for exercising his no-trade clause over the summer. He negotiated for it and he was staying because of family reasons. There is no issue there. The issue to me is how he conducted himself after. This is speculation of course since we don’t know the full details, but it’s painfully obvious there was something going on in the locker room. As the captain, that’s on him to resolve. As the captain and one of the causes of the drama, it’s inexcusable.
The only thing that stopped me from giving Trouba an F was his play to start the season and the fact that he did nothing wrong in the offseason. The locker room issues dominate the grade.
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