And just like that, Rick Nash is no longer a Ranger.
After five-plus years with the Blueshirts, Nash was traded to the Bruins on Sunday morning for a 2018 first-round pick; talented NHL winger Ryan Spooner; veteran forward currently in the minors Matt Beleskey; college defenseman Ryan Lindgren and a seventh-round pick in 2019.
Nash, 33, is set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season as his eight-year, $62.4 million deal comes to a conclusion. The Rangers retained half of his prorated $7.8 million salary-cap hit, while the cap-strapped Bruins retained half of Beleskey’s $3.8 million hit, lessened because he is in the AHL.
Nash submitted his 12-team no-trade list this month, and he said it was a shock to him that a trade was becoming an inevitability. But it wasn’t a shock for general manager Jeff Gorton, who initially had a conversation with his Boston counterpart, Don Sweeney, on Nov. 8 when the Bruins were in town, and through a couple more talks over the ensuing months, the deal all came together Sunday morning.
“Rick has been a terrific player for the organization,” Gorton said before his team’s match against the Red Wings on Sunday night. “He’s a first-class guy. There’s not [enough] good things we can say about the player. Good family. He has been a great Ranger.
“To make that move, it’s very difficult. It’s a hard call to make when you call somebody like that that meant a lot to us. Every time he went on the ice, he gave us everything he had.”
Nash ends his time on Broadway with an anticlimax, having sat out the previous two games as a precaution for what was an inevitable trade for the prime rental winger on the market. Gorton had already traded Nick Holden to the Bruins last week, as well as sending Michael Grabner to the Devils on Thursday night.
There are a few more pieces that could be on the move before Monday’s 3 p.m. deadline, including captain Ryan McDonagh and winger Mats Zuccarello. Although Gorton didn’t want to get into the situations with specific players, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if he was done making major moves, with June’s draft likely being a more opportune time to move players with term left on the deals, such as McDonagh and Zuccarello.
“I think there is a lot of work that can be done, could be done,” Gorton said. “Will it get done? We’ll see. There’s a lot of time for this. As we move forward, there are other opportunities and time that works well to do these kind of deals. Right now we’re less than 24 hours from the deadline, so we’ll see what happens. But I think there are other opportunities here as we move forward.”
Gorton didn’t want to make too much of an evaluation on what he has done with the three deals, saying only that the market has “met expectations.” With the rebuilding strategy that was publicly decreed by Gorton and team president Glen Sather on Feb. 8, the team has been able to amass nine picks in the upcoming draft, including two in each of the first three rounds.
And they added some interesting players, including the 26-year-old Spooner, who made his Rangers debut Sunday night and could still be flipped before the deadline. The forward had nine goals and 16 assists while playing 39 games for the Bruins this season and has 253 games of NHL experience over parts of six seasons. He is in his final year of a contract that carries a $2.825 million salary-cap hit, and he will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights.
Beleskey is a 29-year-old veteran who has been a bust for the Bruins since he signed a five-year, $19 million free-agent deal with them in summer 2015. Boston had put him on waivers in December, and since he cleared, he had been playing for AHL Providence.
All that is trying to help the Rangers move on from Nash, which won’t be easy but something they figured was necessary.
“As an organization, we felt we went to a certain point and we had to look in the mirror and find out what was next. And this is part of that,” Gorton said. “Was it daring? I don’t know. I would argue that we’re doing what we think is the right thing to do to move forward and go where we wanted to go.”