Rangers trade for Penguins' Reilly Smith
Reilly Smith with the Penguins last season. Credit: AP/Gene J. Puskar
One by one, all of the biggest names came off the board Monday as the NHL’s 2024 free agent signing period began. And every free agent the Rangers reportedly coveted went somewhere else.
In the end, general manager Chris Drury, looking for a top-six winger to play with Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, turned to the trade market to fill that need, sending a second-round pick in 2027 and a conditional fifth-round draft pick in 2025 to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for 33-year-old Reilly Smith.
“We’re very excited to get Reilly,’’ Drury told reporters on a Zoom call late in the afternoon. “He’s a player we’ve been looking at and talking about for a while. He brings a lot of versatility to our lineup, has a winning pedigree, having won in Vegas [in 2023], is a proven playoff performer and I think just fits in nicely with our entire group.’’
Drury did sign one free agent Monday, inking center Sam Carrick to a three-year, $3 million contract. Carrick, who ended last season with Edmonton after being traded there by Anaheim at the deadline, replaces Barclay Goodrow as the fourth-line center.
“He brings a hard element to our group,’’ Drury said. “A natural center that brings some edge, some grit, certainly some toughness as well, to our bottom six.’’
Smith, the younger brother of former Rangers defenseman Brendan Smith, had 13 goals and 40 points in 76 games for Pittsburgh last season, but Drury refused to say if he was a Plan B after all of the big names signed elsewhere. He did say the Rangers considered many options.
“We just were talking to a lot of different agents and had a lot of balls in the air throughout the day and just felt this was the best move we could make,’’ he said.
Acquiring Smith didn’t cost much and at least gives the Rangers salary-cap flexibility this year and next, when they will need to have tons of cap space to re-sign Igor Shesterkin, K’Andre Miller and Alexis Lafreniere. Smith is entering the final year of his contract, at a salary-cap hit of $5 million, and an NHL source said the Penguins retained 25% of that hit.
(The same source said the fifth-round pick will be the worse of the Rangers’ own fifth-rounder or the one originally belonging to Minnesota, which the Rangers acquired in the Ryan Reaves trade.)
After adding Smith and Carrick, the Rangers have $8.945 million available under the NHL’s $88 million salary cap for a roster of 13 forwards, four defensemen and two goalies, according to PuckPedia. That doesn’t include restricted free agent defensemen Ryan Lindgren and Braden Schneider, whom they need to re-sign.
They will increase their cap space if they are able to trade captain Jacob Trouba, who was rumored over the weekend to be heading to Detroit. Realistically, when Drury couldn’t move all or part of Trouba’s $8 million cap hit before the weekend, that probably killed any possibility of signing one of the top-tier free agents — Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault or even 35-year-old Patrick Kane.
In talking about the Rangers’ free-agent needs over the weekend in Las Vegas, ESPN analyst P.K. Subban had cautioned that success in the free-agent signing period isn’t all about landing the biggest name.
“I think you’ve got to look at everything in free agency,’’ Subban said. “If you can add somebody that can slide in there [next to Kreider and Zibanejad], that’s great . . . You have to find the right player, though.’’
The 6-1, 185-pound Smith adds speed to the lineup and has scored at least 20 goals five times in his 12 NHL seasons. Asked if he expects Smith to play with Zibanejad and Kreider, Drury said that will be up to coach Peter Laviolette.
As for the status of Trouba, who has been with the Rangers for five years and served as captain for the last two, Drury was noncommittal.
“Jacob plays hard every night, provides a lot of leadership for us,’’ he said. “Everyone knows what I think of him as a person and a player. [But] I’m going to keep any private conversation I have with him or his agent private. You know, we’re always looking to move the team forward and be the best team we possibly can be.’’
The Rangers made qualifying offers to RFAs Lindgren, Schneider, Matthew Robertson and Karl Henriksson. They did not make qualifying offers to Setauket native Bobby Trivigno or goaltender Olof Lindbom.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.