Anecdotally these types of guys help your team. There are tons of players who have said they feel better, or play better, knowing they have a guy like Reaves around. Is that really true, or are they paying lip service to teammates they respect? I don't know. If it is true, does it actually translate to better play on the ice? That would be tough to quantify.
What Reaves will not do is serve as a deterrent. I think it's pretty much definitively established at this point, despite some people refusing to acknowledge it, that deterrence doesn't really exist. At all. Guys like Wilson, Marchand, Torres from a few years ago, Cookie, whoever, they're going to do what they're going to do. It's who they are and how they play. The prospect of maybe having to face Ryan Reaves in a fight or having him go hunting for you, that just doesn't move these guys. That's why they keep doing what they do--because there's no such thing as a deterrent for them. They are shitheads regardless if you have Ryan Reaves sitting on the bench or not.
Still, having Reaves allows the team to play on its front foot, so to speak. He allows us to be the aggressor, where he (and some of our other adds) are out there playing hard, throwing hits, and forcing the other team to respond. That's been a thing with the Rangers for so long--"How will the Rangers respond to (insert physical altercation here)?" I think the goal is to not have that be such a frequent and lingering question and to also flip the script, so to speak.
It's silly to look at this and think that it's purely a reaction to Tom Wilson. Did the Wilson incident factor into this move and a couple others? I mean, it had to. How could it not? But the Rangers were going to need to get tougher and tougher to play against regardless of whether the Wilson thing happened. Lindgren could have gone Happy Gilmore and stabbed Wilson with a skate, and we'd still have needed to address our general team toughness and physicality this offseason.
