New York Rangers
The New York Rangers have cleared out some cap space by trading Marc Staal to the Detroit Red Wings. It also cost them a second round pick and they got nothing in return. It was purely a cap dump and it appears the Rangers could be setting up to do something huge in the offseason. They have tons of cap space, great young talent and are about to select Alexis Lafreniere first overall.
This team went from awful to mediocre pretty quick and they could go from mediocre to excellent in a real hurry.
One area they need to balance out is their defence. They have a lot of depth on the right side with Jacob Trouba, Adam Fox and Tony Deangelo. Their left side? Not so impressive. Ryan Lindgren and Brendan Smith are there but that’s about it and Smith has spent time in the minors, at forward, in the press box and could find himself bought out in the next few days.
So, the Rangers have too many right defenders and not enough left defencemen. Well, the Flames have the opposite dilemma where they have more than enough options on the left side and not enough on the right.
These two teams match up pretty well for a straight swap of blue liners. The Rangers would likely want to part with Deangelo who had an impressive 53 points in 68 games this season. He is a restricted free agent looking for a huge raise, but might have to get it elsewhere.