Rangers trade Reilly Smith to Vegas, acquire Carson Soucy from Canucks
Reilly Smith looks on before a face off during a game between teh Rangers and the New Jersey Devils at Madison Square Garden on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The NHL trade deadline is Friday, but the Rangers got plenty of business done on Thursday, making two trades.
First they sent forward Reilly Smith, an original Golden Knight and Stanley Cup champion with the team, back to Vegas for San Jose’s third-round pick in this year’s NHL Draft and prospect Brendan Brisson.
A few hours later, the Rangers flipped the pick they got in the Smith deal to the Vancouver Canucks for defenseman Carson Soucy.
According to a source, the Rangers will retain 50% of the remaining $3.75 million of Smith’s salary-cap hit. The Pittsburgh Penguins retained 25% of Smith’s actual $5 million hit when they traded him to the Rangers last summer.
Brisson, 23, a first-round pick by Vegas in 2020, will report to the Rangers’ AHL affiliate, the Hartford Wolf Pack.
Soucy, 30, is a 6-5, 208-pound lefthanded shot who is under contract for next season at $3.25 million. He has three goals, seven assists, 42 penalty minutes and a minus-13 rating in 59 games this season with the Canucks, where he was a teammate of J.T. Miller’s.
Soucy has played in 359 NHL games with three teams and is a plus-58 for his career.
He also has been a defense partner with Will Borgen, whom the Rangers obtained in December in the Kaapo Kakko trade. Soucy profiles as a potential top-four defenseman who perhaps could partner with Adam Fox when Fox returns from injured reserve.
With the two trades Thursday, general manager Chris Drury has made six trades this season dating to December, when he dealt captain Jacob Trouba to Anaheim for Urho Vaakanainen and draft picks, then sent Kakko to Seattle for Borgen and picks. He followed that by acquiring Miller and a couple of prospects from Vancouver for Filip Chytil, defenseman Victor Mancini and a first-round pick.
On Saturday, Drury traded defenseman Ryan Lindgren and forward Jimmy Vesey to Colorado for forward Juuso Parssinen, defenseman Calvin de Haan and two picks.
“There’s obviously been a wave of emotions this year in terms of trades and guys leaving, guys coming in, and everything in between,’’ defenseman K’Andre Miller said this week. “But I think, honestly, our group has done really good at responding and keeping that noise to the outside and keeping that noise to the higher ranks of the team, if you will, leaving that in their hands.’’
With nine picks in this summer’s draft, Drury still has assets to spend if he wants to make more deals by the 3 p.m. deadline on Friday.
The Rangers are in an eight-team battle for the Eastern Conference’s two wild-card playoff spots and have 20 games left in the regular season. They are tied for the second wild card with Ottawa, though the Senators have a game in hand, and are a point ahead of Detroit and Montreal.
Smith, 33, had 10 goals and 19 assists in 58 games this season for the Rangers, but as an impending unrestricted free agent, he always was likely to be shipped out at the deadline. He had been held out of the Rangers’ last three games for “roster maintenance’’ while Drury tried to trade him.
“Obviously it’s a different situation, but Reilly was a really good player for us and did a lot of good things,’’ coach Peter Laviolette said before Monday’s game against the Islanders.
While Drury’s main focus has to be fortifying the roster for the playoff push, there’s also intrigue in the question of what happens with Chris Kreider.
Kreider, the longest-tenured Ranger, has been on the trading block since late November, when the story leaked that Drury had sent out a memo to the other 31 NHL general managers that he was actively looking to make trades and specifically was interested in moving on from Trouba and Kreider.
After that story broke, Kreider — who has a 15-team no-trade clause in his contract — revealed he had been bothered by a bad back, seemingly warning teams to be wary of trading for him.
He currently is on his second IR stint of the season and has missed the last six games with an upper-body injury. He has 17 goals, tied for second on the team with Vincent Trocheck and Will Cuylle, and four assists in 48 games. He has six game-winning goals, which leads the team.
Notes & quotes: In between trades, the Rangers sent D Matthew Robertson to Hartford and recalled D Chad Ruhwedel from Hartford.
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.
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