Rangers Likely To Move Vincent Trocheck

When Rangers GM Chris Drury released a letter to the fans last month announcing a retool, he noted that this process could “mean saying goodbye to players that have brought us and our fans great moments over the years.”  We’ve already seen one of those players on the move with last week’s trade that saw Artemi Panarin get moved to Los Angeles.

But retools don’t often stop at one core player being on the move.  Meanwhile, with the market having few defined sellers at this point and a lot of teams still being in the playoff picture, those who are willing to move out some talent appear to be poised to capitalize on a strong trade market.

To that end, Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic recently noted on Edmonton Sports Talk (video link) that it seems likely that center Vincent Trocheck will be on the move before the March 6th trade deadline.

There aren’t many Rangers who have lived up to expectations offensively this season but Trocheck may very well be one of those who have.  After a quieter performance in 2024-25 that saw him collect 26 goals and 33 assists in 82 games (compared to 77 points the year before), the 32-year-old has bounced back a bit this season, notching 36 points in 43 games (a 69-point pace over a full 82-game campaign).

On top of that, Trocheck remains one of the better players at the faceoff dot, winning 56.5% of his draws this season.  He’s also logging more than two minutes per night on both the power play and penalty kill and close to 21 minutes per contest overall.  Suffice it to say, he’s about as complete of a player as you’re going to find on the trade market.

His two-way skillset is what led the Rangers to sign him to a seven-year, $39.375MM contract back in 2022, a deal that still has three years remaining on it after that one.  With a $5.625MM AAV that is already now below-average for a second center, Trocheck is an option that more teams should be able to afford, meaning that New York shouldn’t necessarily have to use one of its salary retention slots to get a deal done.

It’s worth noting that Trocheck does have some trade protection in his deal.  Although he no longer has a full no-move clause, he can still block a trade to a dozen teams.   That would give him a chance to affect his own trade talks, though nowhere close to the extent that Panarin ultimately did to ensure he landed with the Kings.

At this point, the list of potential suitors for Trocheck would probably be longer than the list of teams that wouldn’t show interest in him.  Accordingly, if Drury decides to pull the trigger and move out a longer-term core piece, he will be in a much stronger position than he had with Panarin to elicit a top-end return that moves their retooling process along.  Once the trade freeze ends (on February 22nd at 10:59 PM CT), the Rangers will have just 12 days before the trade deadline to try to find a suitable trade for Trocheck.