The Rangers have traded Reilly Smith to Vegas for San Jose’s Third Round pick in 2025 and forward Brendan Brisson. (Brooks)
The Rangers are retaining 50% of Smith’s cap hit. The Rangers have one more spot where they can retain salary.
Brisson, 23, was the 29th pick overall in 2020 and has two goals and four assists in 24 career NHL games. He will start in Hartford.
He has five goals and 14 assists this season in 45 games for Vegas’ AHL team. He had 38 points in 52 AHL games last season and 37 points in 58 AHL games in 2022-23.
The Rangers acquired Smith last summer from Pittsburgh for a second round pick in 2027 and a fifth round pick in 2025.
Adam Rotter: This is a pretty good return for Smith. San Jose will be picking at the top of the third round and Brisson is a former first round pick and young center.
Smith was acquired as what seemed like a fallback option because the Rangers were not able to clear cap space or make the kind of moves that Chris Drury seemed to want to make. Smith was/is a solid top-nine player but he wasn’t the answer to the Rangers top-line RW problem and once things took a turn downward this season, Smith was obviously going to get traded as a rental.
Brisson is the key to this trade. The Rangers need young centers after trading Filip Chytil and now have Brisson and Juuso Parssinen. Brisson has been known as an offensive player and was more productive the prior two seasons in the AHL than this one, but he’s definitely worth a gamble, especially with a draft pick in exchange for a rental player. As of now it seems he will go to Hartford but it wouldn’t be a shock if he gets called up at some point so the Rangers can get a look at him in the NHL.