Rangers trade for Vladimir Tarasenko

Maybe Rangers general manager Chris Drury thought Thursday was the NHL trade deadline instead of the NBA deadline. Three weeks before the NHL’s March 3 deadline, Drury made the big move Rangers fans have been waiting for when he acquired St. Louis Blues right wing Vladimir Tarasenko.

As a bonus, Drury was able to fill one of his team’s secondary needs in the deal, adding defenseman Niko Mikkola, who figures to plug into the left side of the third defense pair alongside Braden Schneider.

The Rangers sent forward Sammy Blais — a former Blues player who had come to the Rangers in the Pavel Buchnevich trade — back to St. Louis, along with a conditional first-round draft pick in 2023, a conditional fourth-rounder in 2024 and minor-league defenseman Hunter Skinner.

The first-round pick will be the lower of the two the Rangers currently own — their own and Dallas’ from the Nils Lundkvist deal. Because the Dallas pick is top 10-protected this summer, if it ends up in the top 10, the Rangers will keep their own first-rounder this year and send a 2024 first-rounder to St. Louis, the lower of their two picks that year. The fourth-round pick will become a third-rounder if the Rangers make the playoffs.

“It’s something we’ve been looking at for a while,’’ Drury said on a Zoom call when asked why he made the deal now rather than closer to the deadline. “When the pieces started to come together, I didn’t really see any reason to wait. It certainly gives the two new players a little more time to acclimate to our group, and you know, there’s still a few weeks before the deadline, but we’re excited to be able to do it now and get them in the lineup [Friday].’’

The Rangers will host the Seattle Kraken on Friday.

St. Louis will retain 50% of Tarasenko’s $7.5 million salary- cap hit and the 31-year-old Russian will be an unrestricted free agent this summer. Mikkola, 26, also will be a UFA this summer. He is in the final year of his contract, which carries a $1.9 million cap hit.

A lefthanded-shooting right wing, Tarasenko has 10 goals and 19 assists in 38 games. He recently returned from a 10-game absence because of a hand injury. In his 11-year NHL career, all with St. Louis, he has 262 goals and 553 points in 644 games. Tarasenko has 41 goals and 19 assists in 90 playoff games.

He is friends with Rangers left wing Artemi Panarin, with whom he has been teammates on various Russian national teams, including the 2010-11 World Junior Championships squad. Presumably, they would play on the same line with the Rangers, as Panarin has struggled to find chemistry with his linemates this season. That will be coach Gerard Gallant’s call, Drury said.

“I think [Tarasenko is] just an elite talent that could probably fit in a lot of different places,’’ said Drury, who said he talked with Panarin about Tarasenko before the trade. “Ultimately, [Gallant] will tinker around with it and find the best fit for him.’’

The Rangers have been looking for a scoring right wing to play on Panarin’s line all season. Tarasenko made more sense than Chicago’s Patrick Kane or San Jose’s Timo Meier because of a number of factors, including the asking price from the other clubs for their players, and the Rangers’ having little salary-cap flexibility.

Mikkola, a 6-4, 209-pound lefthanded shot, was “a big piece’’ of the deal, Drury said. He has no goals, three assists and a plus-2 rating in 50 games for the Blues this season. Drury called him “a real good shutdown defenseman’’ and said it will be good for Finnish forward Kaapo Kakko to have a countryman in the locker room.

Blais had looked to be a player on the rise at the start of the 2021-22 season before a torn ACL ended his season after 14 games. He leaves the Rangers having never scored a goal for them in 54 games.

“Going back, I think, to a familiar place, could help him,’’ Drury said of Blais. “I hope he has success there.’’

Notes & quotes: The Rangers assigned LW Will Cuylle to AHL Hartford and placed D Libor Hajek on waivers.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

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.