3/11/24 | Elliotte Friedman, while discussing the price Carolina paid for Jake Guentzel, said on 32 Thoughts that, “I believe they had a good idea of what Carolina was willing to do and I think they shopped it other places. I believe they shopped it to Vegas, Vancouver, the Rangers and anybody else who was in on this. I think the Rangers, at the end of the day, were the team that was best positioned to beat it. However, I don’t believe, I’m not sure which one it was, people know that the Rangers have a couple of great prospects, Othmann, Perreault, I don’t know which one we are talking about here, I keep hearing different things and at this time of year there is so much noise that you have to be careful. However I absolutely 100% believe there was somebody that if the Rangers had thrown them in they could have gotten Guentzel and the Rangers didn’t put that player in. Whichever one it was, the Penguins wanted him and the Rangers said ‘no’ and ultimately Carolina got the player. I really do think that if anybody was going to beat Carolina it was probably NY with 1-2 particular prospects that the Penguins had asked for.”
3/8/24 | Prior to today’s trade deadline the Rangers acquired depth defenseman Chad
Ruhwedel from Pittsburgh, depth/minor league forward Nic Petan from Minnesota and Jack Roslovic from Columbus.
The Rangers traded a 2027 4th-round pick for Ruhwedel, Hartford forward Turner Elson for Petan, and a conditional 4th-round pick in 2026 for Roslovic.
Max Pacioretty was rumored to be a possibility for the Rangers, but he decided to remain in Washington.
Frank Vatrano and Pavel Buchnevich were not traded.
Adam Rotter: Overall, when you include Alex Wennberg, the Rangers filled their biggest issues. They got a replacement for Filip Chytil and they added a winger who can swing up and down the lineup. Did they get their top choices to fill those roles? No. They went after Elias Lindholm, reportedly made a late push as the price potentially lowered on Jake Guentzel, and looked into bringing Frank Vatrano back. Tyler Toffoli from NJ was never going to happen. It seems like they got outbid on for Lindholm and Guentzel and wouldn’t pay the high price for Vatrano, but they got solid players at good value and cheap prices. They didn’t swing for the fences and connect like Vegas did, make a hockey trade in swapping young players like Colorado and Buffalo did or overpay to get someone. They are better than they were a few days ago and they deeper, but will it be enough in the playoffs? We’ll see. It’s a somewhat similar deadline to the one two years ago where they filled out the lineup with secondary and tertiary-type players who all ended up succeeding. They acquired bigger names last year, plus Tyler Motte, and it didn’t end up working out for numerous reasons. The Rangers are in first place and didn’t need to radically remake their roster. They have added supplemental pieces that are both playing for contracts and Roslovic has some nice upside potential.
Unfortunately, Ruhwedel has to come into the lineup right away since Jacob Trouba is out 2-3 weeks. Braden Schneider should get a bump into a much bigger role and Ruhwedel will slot onto the third pair with Erik Gustafsson.
There is the other part of this and it’s what the teams around the Rangers did. Carolina made two big moves in getting Guentzel and also taking Evgeny Kuznetsov, at half price, from Washington. We don’t know what Guentzel will look like without Sidney Crosby and how long it will take him, if any, to acclimate to Carolina and Kuznetsov had just been sent down to try and give him a fresh start and he’ll get that in Carolina. The Hurricanes made big moves to try and get over the hump. They were going to be a tough matchup as it is and they got better. They are also probably still gunning for first place in the Metro and the Rangers will need to be on their game to hold them off. I think it’s pretty even between them and the Rangers, with the Rangers getting the big edge with Igor Shesterkin, but we’ll see what happens if they meet in the second round.
3/11/24 | Adam Rotter: We’ll likely never know the full story of the Rangers and Guentzel. What seems certain is that the Rangers were interested and the Penguins wanted at least one of the Rangers top-two prospects. Beyond that, we don’t know much. Maybe the Penguins asked for one of those two early on, the Rangers said ‘no’ and told the Penguins to keep them in the loop in case the price dropped. Maybe they negotiated most of the secondary and tertiary parts of the deal but the Rangers wouldn’t budge on Othmann, Perreault or possibly Kakko. It’s clear that the Rangers had interest and reports late into the day on Thursday still indicated that they were “in” on Guentzel. The Canes GM told Pierre LeBrun that they went 3-4 hours without hearing from the Penguins on Thursday and I’m guessing that was during the mid to late afternoon when more and more reports were saying that multiple teams were still involved. So technically they probably were still “in” late in the day as reports indicated, but if they weren’t going to move Perreault or Othmann than it doesn’t really matter. I had a tough time buying the Rangers interest in Guentzel when the reported price was going to be those high end assets and while they clearly talked with the Penguins, I’m not sure how close they would have gotten if they were holding firm on not moving those guys.