Two years ago, the Devils were in the obvious position of being sellers as the trade deadline approached. General manager Tom Fitzgerald’s club will miss out on the playoffs with 37 points, but the late slide doesn’t mean New Jersey will fall out of contention for the championship.
Jimmy Vesey appeared to be one of the top prospects on the market after establishing himself as a valuable fourth-line penalty killer on an $800,000, one-year contract he received through a training camp tryout, but why? Does that sound all that familiar?
“That was the only deadline I really thought I might get traded,” Veasey said. He completed his first three-season stint with the Rangers, which ended in the 2018-19 season, with his fourth team at the time. “I thought so because of the penalty kill that year and I thought I could help the team in the playoffs.
“That period was so draining on me that I actually went to Fitti’s office to try and find out what the lay of the land was. I asked him. [was] I would get traded and if a team called me up.
“He was great. He was honest with me. I think there were a few teams that were interested in me. But in the end nothing happened.”
In the end, nothing happened for Vesey, nothing happened for the Devils, and a series of bizarre moves resulted in no one being traded at the deadline.
The Rangers are believed to have been one of the parties approached about Vesey in 2022. But when they acquired Tyler Motte (for the first time) from Vancouver a week before the deadline, general manager Chris Drury decided on a fourth-line penalty killer. . After Vesey joined the Blueshirts after being selected to the team in a training camp tryout last season, worlds collided when the club reacquired Mott at the 2023 deadline to play alongside No. 26. .
“It’s an interesting time,” Vesey said after the Rangers’ morning skate before the Avalanche resume Monday at the Garden after an eight-day break. “Regardless of whether a team is a buyer or a seller, there is always a lot of attention on deadlines, and players react to deadlines differently depending on the situation.
“When you’re on a good team, you’re always interested in how management is trying to improve the team.”
The Blueshirts will be in line for the March 8 deadline following Monday’s game in which Jonathan Quick earned a spot following Igor Shesterkin’s participation in the three-day All-Star extravaganza in Toronto. There are 12 games left. After the meat market closes, he plans to have 20 more people cross the finish line.
There is no ambiguity in the Rangers’ or Drury’s perspective. They’re going to buy. However, it is unclear to what extent. The club has a big hole in the middle of the third line. The right wing hole in the Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider line is currently filled by Blake Wheeler. And while there is a need for a physical defenseman on the left side of the third pair, the hierarchy may not see it that way.
Drury has been aggressive in each of the past two deadlines, signing four players in both 2022 and 2023. And all eight players (actually seven with Mott added twice) were rental properties. Justin Braun, Andrew Copp, Frank Vatrano, and Motte were added in 2022, and Vladimir Tarasenko, Niko Mikkola, Motte, and Patrick Kane were acquired in 2023.
In acquiring these rentals, Drury sacrificed only one player from the varsity lineup. That was Sammy Blais, who returned to St. Louis as part of the deal with Tarasenko and Mikkola. Morgan Barron, who was part of the 2022 package that went to Winnipeg for the Cops, was in Hartford when he was signed.
While there may be a lot of anxiety among many athletes with just over four weeks until the deadline, this is not the case among athletes with no-movement clauses in their contracts. Those candidates would include Zibanejad, Kreider, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Jacob Trouba.
So it’s almost impossible to fundamentally transform the club and flip the equation with a big deal over the next month. There will no longer be a Pittsburgh-Hartford deadline trade like the one in 1991, when John Cullen and Zary Zarapski went to the Whalers in exchange for Ron Francis and Ulf Samuelsson.
After Calgary’s Elias Lindholm went to Vancouver and Montreal’s Sean Monahan to Winnipeg last week, Anaheim’s Adam Henrique is the next choice for a rental center to fill a special need on the Blueshirts’ third line. .
It seems highly unlikely that Drury would trade a first-rounder or, say, Kaapo Kakko for just a rental. If Vatrano, who has one year left on his contract, becomes part of the equation, it will be a more nuanced conversation.
“This period can have a huge impact,” Vesey said. “That’s probably what everyone thinks. I know how I’m wired, but it creeps up on me little by little.”
