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Former Vancouver Canucks star J.T. Miller named captain of the New York Rangers

Trevor Beggs
Trevor Beggs
|
Sep 16 2025, 1:52 pm
Former Vancouver Canucks star J.T. Miller named captain of the New York Rangers
Danny Wild/Imagn Images

Locker-room problem or captain material?

Clearly, the New York Rangers believe the latter.

On Tuesday morning, the Rangers announced that they were naming former Vancouver Canucks centre J.T. Miller the 29th captain in team history.

“Since his arrival last season, J.T. immediately became a leader for our group and exemplifies how we want to conduct ourselves both on and off the ice,” Rangers GM Chris Drury said in a press release. “We’re confident he will continue to represent our organization with class, commitment, and integrity.”

The Rangers have been playing without a captain since trading Jacob Trouba to the Anaheim Ducks last season. He had been their captain since the beginning of the 2022-23 season.

Before him, the Rangers’ last captain, ironically, was Ryan McDonagh. Miller and McDonagh were both traded by the Rangers to the Tampa Bay Lightning back in 2018.

It’s certainly been a whirlwind 12 months for Miller and Canucks fans. This time last season, he was at Canucks training camp, looking to help the team take the next step after a season where they pushed the Western Conference champion Edmonton Oilers to Game 7.

Of course, the season quickly fell apart, and reported tension between Miller and Elias Pettersson eventually led to the Canucks trading the franchise leader in points per game to the Rangers in exchange for a 2025 first-round draft pick, Filip Chytil and young defenceman Victor Mancini. The first-round pick was eventually flipped to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor.

After the Canucks season ended, Canucks management gave Miller credit for trying to remedy the issue.

“J.T. tried hard to help fix the situation,” Jim Rutherford told the media back in April. “A lot of people in our organization worked on it, and we had hoped that it could get back to where it was a year ago, because the same two players played a year ago, both had good years, and the team won the division.”

Miller had nine goals and 35 points in 40 games with the Canucks last season. His stat line looked better in New York, as he had 13 goals and 35 points in 32 games to close out the 2024-25 season. The Rangers would still end up missing the playoffs.

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