Rangers bring back J.T. Miller in trade with Canucks for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini, first-round pick

Sometimes you can go home again.

The Rangers acquired center J.T. Miller from Vancouver on Friday night in a trade that sent center Filip Chytil, prospect Victor Mancini and a protected first-round draft pick to the Canucks. The Rangers also received defensemen Jackson Dorrington and Erik Brannstrom in the deal.

The first-round pick is top-13-protected this year. If the pick ends up in the top 13, it will roll over to 2026 and will be unprotected.

By acquiring Miller, team president and general manager Chris Drury appears to have taken another step in reconstructing the Rangers into more of a tougher, meaner team better equipped for the playoffs.

But the cost was steep.

Chytil, 25, was their best center over the course of the season. The 21st overall pick in the 2017 draft has 11 goals and nine assists in 41 games this season while centering the third line, first with Kaapo Kakko and Will Cuylle and, most recently, with Arthur Kaliyev and Chris Kreider.

Miller, 31, has nine goals and 26 assists in 40 games this season. He recorded his first 100-point season in 2023-24, when he had 37 goals and 66 assists for 103 points.

Miller is known as a good two-way center and received votes for the Selke Trophy, awarded to the league’s best defensive forward, in four of the previous five seasons.

The Rangers believe Miller is one of the better impact forwards in the league and won’t just improve their team now but will be a positive force for them in the future. He’s an intense leader and culture-setter who happens to be good friends with the Rangers’ Vincent Trocheck and was a teammate of Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Jimmy Vesey before being traded away.

The Rangers were high on Chytil, but he will be an unrestricted free agent in two years and they felt they couldn’t commit to him long term.

They also liked Mancini but believed he projected to be a fifth or sixth defenseman. Because they just committed to a five-year deal with Will Borgen, there’s no spot available for Mancini on the right side of the defense with Adam Fox, Borgen and Braden Schneider ahead of him.

Chytil participated in the Rangers’ morning skate at the MSG Training Center in Greenburgh on Friday before the team flew to Boston.

“We got to get as many points as we can,” he said when asked about the Rangers’ next five games before the league-mandated pause for the 4 Nations Tournament. “We just need to win a game.”

The Canucks made Miller a healthy scratch ahead of their game in Dallas on Friday night in anticipation of the trade being finalized by the teams and approved by the league. It is believed that Miller could play for the Rangers in Saturday’s nationally televised mid-afternoon game against the Bruins.

It is anticipated that Drury will speak with reporters about the trade before the game.

Miller, whom the Rangers selected with the 15th overall pick in the 2011 draft, played the first five-plus years of his career with the Blueshirts before being traded to Tampa Bay during the 2017-18 season as part of then-general manager Jeff Gorton’s organizational rebuilding project.

Miller signed a five-year, $26.25 million contract with Vancouver on June 26, 2018, and subsequently agreed to a seven-year, $56 million deal with the Canucks in September 2022.

Miller is known to play with emotion and is unafraid to challenge teammates. That became problematic in Vancouver.

Miller was embroiled in a feud with Canucks center Elias Pettersson that caused team president Jim Rutherford to tell the Globe and Mail newspaper on Tuesday that “it certainly appears like there’s not a good solution that would keep this group together.”

“I felt like for a long time, there was a solution here because everybody has worked on it, including the parties involved, but it only gets resolved for a short period of time and then it festers again,” Rutherford told the Canadian newspaper.

“We’ve had those conversations and I think the parties understand that and I think they’ve tried. As you know, sometimes emotions get deep, and as much as people try sometimes, you can’t get over it. It certainly appears that’s what’s going on here.”

When Miller was asked by reporters Wednesday about his thoughts regarding Rutherford’s comments, he said, “I don’t have any . . . I’m not commenting on this.”

With Colin Stephenson