The Rangers have traded Brennan Othmann to Calgary in exchange for RW Jacob Battaglia.
Battaglia, 19, was the 62nd pick in 2024 by Calgary and is playing for Flint in the OHL.
He had 40 goals and 50 assists in 68 games last season, with 3 goals and 13 assists in 11 playoff games.
This season he had 14 goals and 13 assists for Kingston before being traded to Flint where he has 12 goals and 4 assists in 22 games.
Battaglia was not ranked as one of Calgary’s Top 10 prospects in the recent issue of The Hockey News.
Adam Rotter: And that ends the Brennan Othmann era with the Rangers. For whatever reason he never found his groove in the NHL under both Peter Laviolette and Mike Sullivan. The writing was on the wall early this season with Othmann being cut pretty early in training camp and while he played 17 games this season, Mike Sullivan always talked about attention to detail with him. So the Rangers cut bait on him and need to ask themselves why, again, a first round pick didn’t develop into the player he was drafted to be. He’s more in the Lias Andersson and Vitali Kravtsov mold than Kaapo Kakko and, so far, Alexis Lafreniere, but whatever the issue is in either their development system or in their scouting system, it needs to get figured out as the Rangers start adding more young players. For Othmann, he gets a fresh start somewhere else.
In Battaglia the Rangers get another forward who is showing offensive ability at the junior level but has questions about whether he can translate that or something else into being an NHLer. He’s still young and in junior and based upon where Othmann’s value was at this point, this seems about right. It would have been better though if the Rangers had been able to reacquire their second round pick, which Calgary acquired earlier this week. That pick will be early in the second round, which is likely why Calgary wouldn’t have wanted to move it, but had the Rangers been able to acquire their pick back it would have given them more flexibility to play in the RFA market this summer. It’s unlikely they would have anyway, but if the Rangers had their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd round picks it would have given them at least the opportunity to explore certain RFAs.