With the trade deadline now passed, the Rangers acquired:
- Frank Vatrano (For a 2022 4th Round Pick)
- Justin Braun (For a 2023 3rd Round Pick)
- Andrew Copp (For Morgan Barron, two conditional 2nd Round picks, 2023 5th Round Pick)
- Tyler Motte (For a 2023 4th Round Pick)
The Rangers also traded Anthony Bitetto to Nick Merkley in a minor league move.
Adam Rotter: So the Rangers add four rental players, three forwards, one defenseman and a lot of depth overall. They are a deeper team and went for quantity with their moves over one big player. They added Vatrano last week for some potential top-nine offense and Motte and Copp today to bring energy, physicality and depth to the bottom-six. They had the assets to make any move they wanted, except for Claude Giroux since he only wanted to Florida, and Chris Drury went for depth and flexibility.
While these moves help for the present and the focus is on the present, it’s hard not to also look at these moves and see what they didn’t trade. They kept Nils Lundkvist, they kept Zac Jones, I don’t know that Brennan Othman was ever considered a possibility to move, but they kept all of their prospects, including Vitali Kravtsov, except for Morgan Barron. Morgan Barron struggled to break into the lineup this year and they were going to have to give up someone and he was the guy. He still could have had a future as a bottom-six player for the Rangers, but now he will get that chance in Winnipeg. Still, the Rangers kept all of their major assets, and they still may own their first round pick if they don’t get to the Conference Finals or they do get to the Conference Finals and Copp gets hurt. That is important because they are going to need those assets to acquire a potential replacement for Ryan Strome and replacements for all the UFAs they just acquired.
All in all I think it was a pretty successful day for Chris Drury in his first trade deadline. Would things have been different if Tomas Hertl hadn’t signed in San Jose, Nashville made Filip Forsberg available or Drury was willing to trade some of the bigger assets/first round pick for a rental? Maybe Ben Chiarot, Marc Giordano or Rickard Rakell are with the Rangers if they were willing to trade their first rounder without conditions, but it’s better that they kept those assets. The Rangers top-six and power play has carried them and they obviously feel that either Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko, when he returns, can handle those slots on the right side or Andrew Copp could slot into one of those spots. What was a bigger concern was the third line that seemed to have new players on it every night and a fourth line that was good at times this year, especially with Barclay Goodrow was on it, but had been faltering due to depth issues. They have made moves to address that and on paper the Rangers are a much deeper and formidable team up front.
On defense, you knew they were going to add somebody with experience and Braun fits that. Maybe Braun can move to the left side and be partners with Patrik Nemeth, but I think that the Rangers start game one of the playoffs, pending that everyone on defense is healthy, with Nemeth and Braun on the third pair.
In goal, it was always remote that the Rangers were going to trade Georgiev, especially after last night’s performance.