The Rangers have traded Chris Kreider and Anaheim’s own 4th round pick in 2025 to the Anaheim Ducks for 2023 2nd Round pick Carey Terrance and Toronto’s 3rd round pick in 2025.
Chris Drury said in a statement, “We want to thank Chris Kreider for all of his contributions to the Rangers organization over his stellar career. Chris has been an integral part of some of the most iconic moments in Rangers history, including setting multiple franchise records and helping the team advance to the 2014 Stanley Cup Final. His leadership on the ice and tireless efforts in the community – which he was recognized for as the inaugural recipient of the Rod Gilbert “Mr. Ranger” Award – only add to his distinguished Rangers legacy. Chris will always be a Ranger and we wish him and his family all the best.”
Ducks GM Pat Verbeek said “Chris Kreider is the type of player we were looking to add this offseason. He has size, speed and is a clutch performer that elevates his game in big moments. Chris also upgrades both of our special teams units, something we really needed to address.”
Adam Rotter: Ever since Kreider’s name was mentioned in that memo with Jacob Trouba last November it has sort of seemed inevitable that the longest tenured Ranger was not going to finish this contract and/or his career in New York. There was a part of me that wanted to see if Kreider could bounce back after last season, return to being a 30-goal guy under Mike Sullivan and David Quinn’s PP and help get the Rangers back into the playoffs. But the fact that he didn’t have a full no-move anymore, that the Rangers need cap space and he was banged up for most of last season made a return incredibly unlikely.
He’ll easily go down as one of the Rangers best players of the post 2004-05 lockout era. He’ll finish 3rd all-time in goals, tied for first in PP goals, second in playoff games played and first in playoff goals. Had they been able to win then I think he’d be a lock to have his #20 retired, but I don’t expect that to happen now.
Kreider has played for John Tortorella, Alain Vigneault, David Quinn, Gerard Gallant and Peter Laviolette. He stayed through the rebuild, scored 149 goals in his last 310 games after scoring 177 goals in his first 573 games. Kreider seemed to become a different player when the Rangers stopped trying to force him to use his speed to create chances and throwing those alley-oop passes down the ice to beat an icing call and instead let him use his power and presence around the front of the net and then, later on, his speed as a penalty killer.
He’s been key to the Rangers turnaround, prior to last season, and didn’t deserve to his name leaked in trade talks and certainly didn’t need to be so publicly healthy scratched when it would have been easy to just say it was injury related. The fact that we are at this point with Kreider after he singlehandedly saved the Rangers from a likely mega collapse against Carolina in the 2024 playoffs with his Hat Trick just shows how far things went off the rails. I always expected that Kreider would be a career Ranger, re-sign after this current deal is up and that because of his size, speed and skating that he’d be able to ease into another phase of his career and continue being a veteran leader. Chris Drury wants to continue making drastic changes and there isn’t a more drastic move that Drury can make, without trying to force Mika Zibanejad or Artemi Panarin to waive their no-move clauses or crazily trading Adam Fox or Igor Shesterkin, than trading Kreider. He took over for Henrik Lundqvist as the constant from year to year but now his time with the Rangers is over.
He’ll leave a lot of different roles that need to be filled. He became a top penalty killer, he’s still one of the best in front of the net on the PP, he’s at worse a middle-six winger that could score 20 goals and he’s been a major leader and mentor for almost every young player that has come through in the last few years.
Is it the right move organizationally to get rid of Kreider? Probably. They need his cap space to make more changes or add players, they need guys like Brennan Othmann/Brett Berard/Gabriel Perreault to get more minutes and if he were to stay and have another injury plagued season, the Rangers would have no option other than a buyout to move on after next season. I hope Kreider is healthy and returns to being a solid contributor next season, but it’s not going to be with the Rangers.
In terms of the return, a healthy Kreider or a Kreider off of a different season than last season could have probably netted more, but this was much more about freeing up cap space, freeing up that roster spot and shaking things up. Terrance is a young forward that is about to turn pro and could be a middle-six player for them. Some sort of other deal that involved Trevor Zegras coming back would have been exciting but that doesn’t solve much cap wise. Freeing up $6. 5 million should end all the nonsense about a Will Cuylle offersheet and it could end the talk around K’Andre Miller, but it seems like that is another situation where the Rangers are ready to move on, shake up a core player and bring in some new blood.
The question becomes what Chris Drury will do with that cap space. He essentially turned the freed up space from the Jacob Trouba trade into JT Miller and now he has more space to try and formulate the roster in a different way. It’s also the third move Chris Drury has made that has freed up a ton of cap space with little to nothing coming back in return.