Is your head still spinning?<\/p>\n
The New York Rangers got off to a slower start than many NHL teams when free agency opened at noon on Wednesday, but they finished with a flurry.<\/p>\n
Between their first trade of the day for backup goalie Joonas Korpisalo<\/a> and their final piece of business (at least for now) of flipping defenseman Will Borgen<\/a> to the Boston Bruins for two draft picks, they completed seven transactions in less than five hours. The biggest ones came in the final hour or so.<\/p>\n In total, seven new players were added \u2014 forwards Oliver Bjorkstrand, Cole Beaudoin and Joe Veleno, defensemen Sean Durzi, Marcus Pettersson and Marc Del Gaizo, and Korpisalo \u2014 plus three draft picks. Out went three players and two picks, most notably veteran center Vincent Trocheck, who landed with the Utah Mammoth<\/a> following months of trade speculation. This came days after picking nine new prospects<\/a> in the 2026 NHL Draft, including No. 5 selection Alberts \u0160mits<\/a>, and making their splashiest trade of the offseason to date by acquiring Pavel Dorofeyev<\/a> and signing the 25-year-old goal-scorer <\/a>to a seven-year, $77 million extension.<\/p>\n Who are the top five NHL players to hit free agency?<\/p>\n So, what do we make of it all? We\u2019ll take time in the coming days and weeks to process the most consequential offseason of team president and general manager Chris Drury\u2019s five-year tenure, but there are two ways you could look at it.<\/p>\n The Rangers are in a better place today than they were last week, in terms of NHL competitiveness and depth of young talent. My initial feeling is that both are at least partially true.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t argue that the forward group is better with Dorofeyev and likely Bjorkstrand in the top six than it was with Trocheck and star winger Artemi Panarin, who was traded in February for a return that didn\u2019t match his elite production. The Rangers already lacked firepower and have even less now, but they\u2019re definitely trending in a younger direction \u2014 and I have a hunch they\u2019ll look for other ways to add up front before the summer is through.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the D corps is decidedly improved. Matthew Robertson and Braden Schneider finished as the second pair last season, but they\u2019ll be bumped down to the third and replaced by an intriguing duo of Pettersson and Durzi. (The likelihood of Schneider sticking around has increased, following New York\u2019s decision to move on from Borgen, who\u2019s five years older and fell behind Schneider in terms of usage last season.)<\/p>\n Both acquisitions have a lot to prove, with the 30-year-old Pettersson coming off arguably the worst season of his nine-year career (his 43.76 percent expected goals-for rate and 2.86 xGA\/60 were both career worsts, according to Evolving Hockey) and the 27-year-old Durzi being disrupted by injuries the last two seasons. But they possess complementary skill sets \u2014\u00a0 the lefty Pettersson as the sturdy, 6-foot-5 defender, while the righty Durzi is more of an agile puck-mover \u2014 and they will raise the floor of the defense, if healthy.<\/p>\n Petterson also enjoyed the best years of his career during his seven seasons in Pittsburgh with current Rangers coach Mike Sullivan, which was a clear selling point for the blueliner.<\/p>\n Their additions should allow New York to take its time with \u0160mits. He\u2019s expected to sign his entry-level contract this summer, and was considered the draft\u2019s most NHL-ready defenseman, but easing him in with AHL Hartford is probably a good idea, since previous prospects flopped after being fast-tracked to the NHL. The Wolf Pack will have perhaps their most promising roster ever, with \u0160mits, Beaudoin, Liam Greentree and others set to turn pro. I understand that may not be saying much, given Hartford\u2019s checkered history, but improved depth in the pipeline is one of the more important takeaways from the last few days.<\/p>\n \u0160mits is the new crown jewel, but Beaudoin will be the X-factor. Drury held onto Trocheck at the trade deadline because he valued players over picks<\/a>, and he was able to secure two in Beaudoin and Durzi (plus a 2027 third-rounder) from an up-and-coming Mammoth team that was anxious to add a veteran presence. Utah tried to trade for Trocheck in March and persisted this summer, with the center warming to the idea of playing for a young contender.<\/p>\n
\nThe problems that required such extreme offseason surgery were largely self-inflicted<\/a>, with plenty of scalpel work still to be done.<\/p>\n