{"id":118296,"date":"2026-01-31T12:33:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118296\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T12:33:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:33:31","slug":"why-islanders-pulled-off-pair-of-cross-town-trades-for-carson-soucy-ondrej-palat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118296\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Islanders pulled off pair of cross-town trades for Carson Soucy, Ond\u0159ej Pal\u00e1t"},"content":{"rendered":"

ELMONT, New York \u2014 By swinging a pair of trades with New York-area rivals, first-year Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche was aiming to do more than add reinforcements to his club, which sits in third place in the Metro Division. He also wanted to send a message.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to show our players, \u2018Hey, I want to make the playoffs,\u2019\u201d Darche said. \u201cI want to reward them for where the team is at this stage of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for the players,\u201d coach Patrick Roy added. \u201cI saw them this morning: They were excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darche first struck a deal Monday with the rival Rangers, landing Carson Soucy for a 2026 third-round pick<\/a>. The trade was only the fourth ever between the two teams and the first since 2010. Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Soucy deal became official, Darche weaponized his team\u2019s cap flexibility to acquire Ond\u0159ej Pal\u00e1t<\/a> ($6 million cap hit through 2026-27) from New Jersey for forward Maxim Tsyplakov, whose production has plummeted this season. The Devils also sent the Islanders a 2026 third-round pick and 2027 sixth-round pick for taking Pal\u00e0t\u2019s contract off their books.<\/p>\n

Essentially, Darche got back the third he gave up for Soucy, plus added another late-round pick.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to draft and protect the future of the franchise and add two players that are going to help us,\u201d Roy said. \u201cWe do believe that today we\u2019re a better team than yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soucy and Pal\u00e1t appear ready to immediately slide into the Islanders\u2019 lineup against the Rangers, the team\u2019s opponent both Wednesday at home and Thursday on the road. Pal\u00e1t skated Wednesday morning on a line with Bo Horvat and Emil Heineman, and Soucy was paired with Adam Boqvist. The defenseman will have the interesting task of going against his former team \u2014 and now crosstown rival \u2014 twice in two days. He said that when his former teammates texted him good luck, they also mentioned they\u2019d see him on the ice soon.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Soucy has now changed teams twice in the past 11 months, but the circumstances are opposite. In March, he agreed to waive his no-trade clause<\/a> with the Vancouver Canucks and move 3,000 miles to join the Rangers. His trade from the Rangers to the Islanders offered a sharp contrast. The teams\u2019 home arenas are less than 20 miles apart.<\/p>\n

Soucy is a pending free agent, and his no-trade clause converted to a 12-team no-trade list this past summer. He\u2019s the first Ranger shipped out since general manager Chris Drury announced through a letter to fans that the team was entering a \u201cretool.\u201d<\/a> Soucy appreciated not having to move far, especially after welcoming his third child, a baby girl, less than two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrury did me a favor of not wanting to ship my family (across the country),\u201d Soucy said Wednesday in his first media availability with the Islanders. \u201cIt\u2019s nice that we\u2019re not having to move houses and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Darche sees Soucy as a player who can bring physicality, experience and penalty kill ability. He has only eight points in 46 games this season, but has a strong plus-2.9 defensive rating, per colleague Dom Luszczyszyn\u2019s Net Rating model. Darche also made note in his news conference that Soucy was one of the only Rangers defensemen with a positive plus-minus (plus-four). The veteran looked like a solid bottom-pair defenseman this season with the Rangers, but the team overall has been disappointing, leading to Drury\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, for myself and the team, not what we hoped when I got (to the Rangers),\u201d Soucy said. \u201cThis is kind of the repercussions of that: Guys might have to be moved there because (the Rangers) want to win there, and, unfortunately, we didn\u2019t this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darche was in the Lightning front office before taking the Islanders\u2019 GM job, so the Pal\u00e0t trade is a reunion. The two won a pair of Stanley Cups together in Tampa Bay before Pal\u00e0t signed with the Devils in 2022, and Darche raved about the 34-year-old winger\u2019s playoff resume, which includes 155 games played and 103 points.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at his stats in the playoffs, his points per game, goals per game, everything is higher than the regular season,\u201d Darche said. \u201cWe\u2019re bringing that winning pedigree. Just a guy who plays the right way, who defends well.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a reason, though, that New Jersey wanted to move on from Pal\u00e0t. His production (four goals and 10 points in 51 games) did not match his contract\u2019s $6 million average annual value. The Islanders, with four players on long-term injured reserve (Kyle Palmieri, Pierre Engvall, Alexander Romanov and Semyon Varlamov) and financial flexibility beyond this season, are more capable of handling that cap hit.<\/p>\n

Pal\u00e0t believes a fresh start could be important after what he described as a \u201cbad\u201d start to his year with the Devils.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to produce a little more than in New Jersey, but I\u2019m not here to score 50 goals a season,\u201d he said. \u201cJust here to bring the two-way game that is very important in this league.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Pal\u00e0t has a 10-team trade list and said he agreed to waive his trade protection to come to the Islanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat organization, good group of guys that are in a playoff spot, playing hard, playing for each other,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd obviously family reasons, too. It\u2019s not too far for my family, so I can go home on off days and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a boost for both him and Soucy. Pal\u00e1t has two daughters, and they won\u2019t have to immediately move from New Jersey. Soucy has a house near Greenwich, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part, I\u2019m hoping to spend most nights there,\u201d he said, though he added he could end up renting a Long Island apartment or using day rooms for game days.<\/p>\n

Regardless, he\u2019ll likely have more peace of mind than last season, when he packed a huge suitcase and left Vancouver while his wife had to handle moving.<\/p>\n

By striking deals before the Olympic break and not waiting until the March trade deadline, Darche believes his new players will have more time to settle in. Pal\u00e1t will represent Czechia at the Olympics, but Soucy will get multiple practices with his new club as it ramps back up toward the end of the break.<\/p>\n

The general manager also added that he might not be done. He wouldn\u2019t rule out using one of his two 2026 first-round picks at the trade deadline to further bolster the roster.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s off the table if I can improve the team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even, as he showed to start this week, if it means trading with area rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ELMONT, New York \u2014 By swinging a pair of trades with New York-area rivals, first-year Islanders general manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22380,9,24,55,54,6821,541,539,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-118296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-jersey-devils","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-new-york-islanders","14":"tag-new-york-rangers","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}