Rumours have been swirling for more than a week that the Rangers front office were underwhelmed with their teams start to the SHL season and were ready to shake things up. Rangers fans began holding their breathe with every reported trade rumour praying that team management had not grown impatient with the rebuilding process and were about to sacrifice the future to win now. Those rumours only intensified over the weekend with reports that GM Todd Westacott was deep into talks with several teams and that a deal may be likely.

Early this morning Rangers fans breathe a sigh of momentary relief as a deal was announced but it was not the one they were expecting. A post on the teams official twitter account announced that an SHL Expansion deal had been reached with the Seattle Kraken, sending the Rangers 2023 2nd round pick to Seattle in exchange for an agreement that Seattle would accept Wayne Simmonds in the upcoming Expansion Draft. With Jesper Boqvist being predicted as the most likely piece to be exposed and snatched up by the Kraken, the deal made sense but hardly lived up to the hype from the past week of rumours.

Just when it looked like all the rumours had been hugely overblown, a second tweet from the Rangers account announced that prospect sensation Dawson Mercer had been traded to the Vancouver Canucks along with the 2022 Anaheim 1st round pick, the 2022 Toronto 1st round pick and some additional pieces in exchange for Mika Zibanejad, Jeff Petry, Kevin Shattenkirk and Elvis Merzlikens. It has since been confirmed the additional pieces heading to Vancouver are Ryan Suter, Drew Shore, Michael Sgarbossa and Alex Lyon. There are also reports that a Future Consideration is involved that would protect the Rangers against the Toronto pick potentially falling within the top 10 of the upcoming draft. In the event that the pick does end up top 10, the Rangers would then keep the pick and send the 2022 Calgary 1st round pick along with the 2022 Vancouver 2nd round pick in its place.

Rangers GM Todd Westacott had this to say in a press conference held just moments again about the deal:

The Rangers organization would like to thank the Vancouver Canucks for their patience and willingness to work together to find a deal that worked well for both organizations. Althought it pains us to give up a potential young superstar in Dawson Mercer, we felt that the rewards on our end in bringing in four players that can help us immediately and over the next few seasons outweighed the risks. Mika Zibanejad and Jeff Petry are stars right now in the SHL that immediately plug into our top line and makes us a better team. They are the exact type of upgrades we were looking for coming into this season. Kevin Shattenkirk and Elvis Merzlikens help the depth of our lineup considerably. Shattenkirk is a veteran that provides us alot of flexibility and depth on the backend. Merzlikens gives us some depth in goal and gives us a great 1B option to manage the workload of Ilya Sorokin and ensure he gets the opportunity to play on full rest.

When it was pointed out that three of the names coming back to the Rangers would all have contracts expiring in two seasons making them UFAs, Westacott had the following to say:

We took the contracts and years of control into consideration for the pieces moving in either direction as part of this trade. Its true, but that scenario is still two seasons away. A lot changes over the course of two seasons. The hope is that we could extend at least one of those guys before they reach UFA and potentially two of them if it makes sense at that time. Two years is a long to be able to plan for that scenario.

When asked if the Rangers saw something missing in Dawson Mercer that lead to the decision to trade him, Westacott scoffed:

The kid is legit….. At the end of the day as an organization we had a tough decision to make. In order to make the kind of upgrades we were looking for you have to be willing to give up something of value. You aren’t going to find the calibre of players we were targeting without giving up some good futures. It just happened to work out that Vancouver was the team we felt were the best fit for a deal and Dawson Mercer was the high end prospect that they really had their heart set on. If there was a way that we could have pulled off a deal like this and kept Mercer within the Rangers organization….. and believe me we tried….. we would have gone that route. Unfortunately the current market dictated that a piece like Dawson Mercer was the cost to bring in the calibre of players we needed to be a playoff threat.

The next question ultimately became “why now?”

We had a plan going into this rebuild of 3 successful drafts where we stockpiled high end young talent. This offseason we just completed that third strong draft year. We are still well positioned in draft currency owning 2 first round picks in next offseason’s deep draft pool. We also have budding stars at every level of the organization coming down the pipeline. Every successful rebuild has to include an exit plan. How are you going to transition from stockpiling draft picks and prospects to seeing those players potential come to realization for your pro club, while at the sametime bringing in the right veteran pieces to support your core? If you don’t have an exit plan you end up always rebuilding and very rarely reaping the rewards. We also have a couple of core young players moving into their prime years in Matthew Tkachuk, Kyle Connor and Ilya Sorokin. Once we were able to convince Evgeni Malkin to sign in New York…. it just felt like this was the right time to start bringing meaningful hockey back to Madison Square Gardens and the Rangers fanbase.

The final question GM Todd Westacott took was “Can we expect any further moves?”

Its hard to say right now. We are still in discussions with several other teams and will always be looking to improve our roster. We still have a ton of high end young talent coming down the pipeline and there isn’t enough room for them all to play for the Rangers. Lundell, Podkolzin, Newhook, Boldy, Sillinger, Lysell, Svechkov, Schneider, Tippett, Kyrou, Kaliyev…. just to name a few. We will be watching these young men very closely and will have some more tough decisions to make as to who the Rangers future will be built around and who could be moved to bring in supporting pieces. The Rangers are ready to start winning again and bring back meaningful playoff hockey to our fanbase. We will make whatever moves are necessary to make that happen…. not only this years but for years to come.