TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — Vincent Trocheck is well aware that these could be his final days as a New York Ranger, yet he appears carefree. The 32-year-old center is carrying himself with the ease of a player who’s ready to embrace whatever comes next.
Winning an Olympic gold medal with Team USA last month has undoubtedly helped his mood, but there’s also a level of maturity at this stage of his career — and life — that doesn’t leave much room for self-pity.
“I’ve been doing this my whole life, right?” Trocheck said after Monday’s morning skate at the MSG Training Center. “If I get traded, I’m fine. I’m not worried about myself. I’m more worried about my family. That’s the only thing I have to worry about.”
Trocheck has had a month and a half to wrap his mind around the likelihood that a trade is coming. He spoke to Rangers team president Chris Drury about it on Jan. 16, the same day Drury issued his retool letter to fans, and has used the days since to prepare his children, Leo and Lennon, for the possibility.
“I don’t want to wait till the last possible second, then we’re traded and it’s like, ‘Hey, your friends are here and this and that.’ So, I warned them,” he explained.
How did they take it?
“My daughter has no idea what’s going on,” Trocheck said with a laugh. “My son was like, ‘Well, I’ll stay because I have a hockey team here. I didn’t get traded.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s a good point.’ They went through the roller coaster of emotions with being 7 years old and having friends here. Obviously, it was sad at first. It’s like, ‘Why? I have friends here. I don’t want to leave. Me and mom and Lennon can stay.’ This and that. And then as the days go on, he starts to think about it. He’ll be fine.”
With family being Trocheck’s top priority, the Pittsburgh native confirmed multiple reports, including one from The Athletic, that he prefers to stay on the East Coast. He has a 12-team no-trade list and said, “It’s not a secret: (Western teams) are on my no-trade clause.”
“Family’s important to me, and my family’s on the East Coast,” he added.
His other strong preference is to land with a contending team.
“If I’m gonna get traded to a team that’s in the same situation as us, then I don’t want to move,” Trocheck said “That sounds miserable in a new city. I am 32 years old. I would like to win a Stanley Cup, so if I am going to get traded, I would like to go to a team that’s winning, or has a chance to win.”
The Minnesota Wild are considered the front-runners, with The Athletic previously reporting the Wild are not on Trocheck’s no-trade list, but it also sounds like Drury is using the days leading up to Friday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline to continue shopping for the best offer. The Carolina Hurricanes and Detroit Red Wings are logical landing spots, while the Colorado Avalanche and Utah Mammoth are lurking if he can be persuaded to go further west. Other teams are surely involved, as well.
Asked if the Rangers have considered sitting Trocheck to protect him from injury, coach Mike Sullivan responded, “Not to this point, no.”
Trocheck indicated he’s been kept informed about what’s brewing, but only to a certain extent.
“I feel like I’m as involved as I can be,” he said. “I only have a 12-team no-trade clause. It’s not like I have full protection and I need to be in with them on every single phone call. But I mean, me and (Drury) have a great relationship. He’s been very open and honest with me and transparent, so I feel like I get as many calls as a player could get.”
While Trocheck is less emotional about his situation than he may have been the only other time he was traded in 2020, when he went from the Florida Panthers to the Hurricanes, he also has better perspective now.
Monday’s 7 p.m. game against the Columbus Blue Jackets could be Trocheck’s final at Madison Square Garden as a member of the home team, so he’s trying to savor it.
“With the Olympics, that was one of those moments where I’m just trying to sit there in the moment and take it all in,” he said. “There’s a good chance I don’t ever get to do that again. So that was a month where I just tried to stay in the good old days as much as I possibly could. And now it’s the same thing.
“The older my kids get — I don’t want to say the older I get, because I feel like I’m still young — but the older my kids get, and the more they start to realize what’s going on in hockey, the more I feel like I have to just sit down and take every moment in as much as I possibly can. I talk to a lot of older players that play in the league that had kids that are around my kids’ age. Whenever they were playing, they say it goes so fast. Obviously, everybody says it, but they say that those were the best times of their career whenever their kids were able to come into the locker room or be at all the games. That kind of stuff, I try to take that as much as I can.”
He’s looking forward to experiencing that in whichever city he ends up in next, but the logistics of what that will look like remain up in the air.
“My wife says she’ll move the second that I move, and I don’t know how realistic that is,” Trocheck said. “We do have kids in school. My son plays hockey and baseball, so I don’t know. That’s one of those figure-it-out-on-the-move kind of things.”