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The New York Rangers have hit the skids as of late, but their front office has been doing whatever they can to write the ship, including shipping former captain Jacob Trouba out of town to lock up netminder Igor Shesterkin.

However, Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer thinks they may have done a little too much, especially as it relates to reports that the Blueshirts’ No. 1 trade target was Senators captain Brady Tkachuk.

A report from New York Post columnist and Hockey Hall of Famer Larry Brooks claimed that the Rangers were interested in Tkachuk, and Andlauer didn’t seem to be enthused about those reports in a recent interview with The Athletic, although, he never mentioned the Rangers by name.

“Here’s my frustration: I talk about how I care for these players, and I care for their families — you make a commitment to a team for six, seven years, you set roots in the community, you’re part of this community, there’s a lot of pressure on these young men,” Andlauer told the outlet. “Yes, people might say they make millions of dollars, but the reality is there comes a responsibility with that.

“And when I see our captain, in the one year I’ve been here (as Senators owner), there’s been three separate occasions where there’s been fires we had to put out. I can tell you 100 percent there’s never actually been an ounce of discussion about Brady Tkachuk being anything other than an Ottawa Senator.”

Rumors that the Rangers were interested in trading for Senators captain Brady Tkachuk have caused a bit of a beef between the two clubs. (David Kirouac-Imagn Images)

Andlauer said that the team has never talked to any other teams about dealing Tkachuk, and expressed frustrations that either Brooks had published false information, or perhaps been fed false information, which he called “soft tampering.”

“If indeed he’s being fed false information, or people are giving this information from another NHL organization, I don’t know — we just had a big memo about tampering from the NHL,” Andlauer said. “I might consider that soft tampering.”

Like I said, Andlauer never mentioned the Rangers, but we all knew who he was talking about, and so did the Rangers. They released a statement through NHL insder Frank Seravalli hitting back at Andlauer’s insinuations.

We’ll see if more comes from this, but unfortunately, the Senators and Rangers won’t play each other again until January 21.