Rumblings of tampering allegations between Rangers and Canucks

According to a report from Peter Baugh of The Athletic, New York Rangers forward Vincent Trocheck and his wife Hillary Trocheck played a large part in the Rangers landing star forward JT Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. In fact, Natalie Miller, JT's wife, also played a big part in things.

Miller and Trocheck are lifelong friends who have always dreamed of playing together. Their wives are also close friends and they may have conspired to get this trade across the finish line.

From Baugh earlier today:

A little less than a month ago, Hillary Trocheck surprised Natalie Miller for her birthday, flying across North America for a surprise visit in Vancouver. Both their husbands, Vincent Trocheck and J.T. Miller, were on hockey road trips for the Rangers and Canucks, respectively, and the wives reached out.

“The two of them, they were pushing us: ‘Oh you guys have got to get this trade done!’” Vincent Trocheck said. “We’re like, ‘We don’t have any say.’”

Vincent would go on to say that he personally spoke with Miller on behalf of the Rangers in order to gauge the then-Canucks players' interest in New York... which... honestly is pretty close to tampering.

“I don’t think at the start of the year we were thinking about playing with each other, but when the opportunity came it’s something that, for our families, is really special,” Miller said. “For us to be here together, trying to work together for a common goal, it’s a really cool feeling.”

Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury said the Rangers’ front office did “a lot of homework” on Miller before making the deal. During that process, he talked to Trocheck, who has emerged as a key voice in the Rangers dressing room and a potential option to fill the team’s vacant captaincy.

“(Drury) came to me whenever he thought it might be a possibility that J.T. would be traded,” Trocheck said. “Just asked if it was something that J.T. would … be willing to do, come to New York. That was just the start of the process. And then talking to J.T., seeing if New York was somewhere he wanted to be was the next step.”

Trocheck sensed that “originally he didn’t really want to leave Vancouver. His family had made a home there.” But Miller clearly warmed to the idea of getting traded and acknowledged “it got a little ugly (in Vancouver) at the end.” He called it a team effort between his camp and the Canucks to find him a different place to play.

“It was something we’ve always dreamed of, playing together,” Trocheck said. “Obviously the logistics of it, he’s closer to home: his family can come up any time, he’s got friends here outside of hockey. All of that put together, once he kind of processed it, then he wanted to come.”

You may recall that back in January the Canucks sent a memo out to the entire league warning about potential tampering charges. I'm wondering if that memo was sent out with Trocheck and the Rangers entirely in mind?

Read below for our earlier report on the Miller, published by Hockey Feed staff writer Jonathan Larrivee this past weekend.

There was a great deal of mystery surrounding the unexpected leave of absence taken by now former Vancouver Canucks star forward J.T. Miller earlier this season but for the first time a National Hockey League insider has provided a hint into the motivations behind that decision.

On Monday, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman discussed the recent trade that saw Miller sent to the New York Rangers and it was during his comments on that topic that he let slip a very interesting detail about Miller's sudden departure from his former team earlier in the season. Although Friedman did not go into any specific details regarding the nature of the incident, he did confirm that some type of incident had occurred involving Miller following a game against the Nashville Predators.

"They had the Nashville game and whatever happened after that game, and I've heard a couple different versions, and nobody will confirm it so I'm not gonna say it," said Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast. "But whatever the case was J.T. Miller went on his leave."

I'll leave you to speculate on what the nature of that incident may have been but, given that this entire fiasco appears to have been fueled by personal animosity between Miller and former teammate Elias Pettersson, it seems fair to suggest that the fued between the two star forwards was at the center of that incident.

It sounds like whatever this incident was, it proved to be the final nail in the coffin for Miller's time in Vancouver. According to Friedman the hope was that the leave of absence would cool things off between Miller and Pettersson, but things would not work out that way in the end.

"When Miller came back from his leave things just didn't get better in terms of the relationship and the stress and things like that," said Friedman. "I think everybody hoped he would come back and things would change and they didn't. I think that was when the decision was made... that they were gonna move on."

It will be very interesting to hear the full details of what really went on when someone inevitably writes a book about it some day.