The Rangers and Islanders are deep in talks on a deal that would send defenseman Carson Soucy across town to Elmont, Vince Z. Mercogliano of The Athletic reports. If the trade doesn’t get materialized today, Soucy has still played his last game as a Blueshirt – he’ll be scratched for tonight’s game against the Bruins to protect him from an injury, Mercogliano said.
Soucy, 31, is purely a shutdown threat at this stage of his career. He was a fifth-round pick by the Wild back in 2013 and took a long development path through college and the minors before emerging as a full-time piece for the 2019-20 season. After two full years in Minnesota, he was plucked by the Kraken in the 2021 expansion draft.
Since then, Soucy hasn’t spent more than two full seasons with an organization. Upon becoming an unrestricted free agent for the first time in 2023, he inked a three-year, $9.75MM deal with the Canucks worth $3.25MM annually. He’s in the final year of that deal now, having waived his no-trade clause last season to facilitate a deal to the Rangers at the deadline. He now finds himself on the move once again, but won’t need to travel very far as the New York clubs complete their first trade with each other since 2010 and just the fourth all-time.
At best, his free-agent splash in Vancouver can be described as fair value. He missed more than half of his only full season in Vancouver with various injuries before posting a career-worst -11 rating in 75 appearances with the Canucks and Blueshirts last season. This year, while his eight points and a +4 rating in 46 games look acceptable enough for a second or third-pairing threat, his underlying numbers show an uglier picture. His two most frequent 5-on-5 pairings, on the left side with William Borgen and Braden Schneider, have both controlled a team-worst 42.4% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck. His 43.8% Corsi share at even strength also ranks last among Rangers defenders despite him seeing easier deployment than Borgen, Schneider, and Urho Vaakanainen.
Soucy was a great two-way piece lower on Seattle’s depth chart during his two-year run there, though, including a career-best 10 goals and 21 points in 64 games during the 2021-22 season. The 6’4″, 211-lb lefty also averages 101 blocks and 129 hits per 82 games for his career, so he brings a physical edge to an Isles blue line that’s lost high-paid shutdown threat Alexander Romanov for virtually the entire season due to a shoulder injury. With righty Ryan Pulock now also dealing with an upper-body injury, Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche won’t play the waiting game as the Isles gun for a playoff berth in the first year of the Matthew Schaefer era.
While Soucy’s acquisition is clearly targeted at ending the third-pairing lefty rotation that’s fallen in the hands of AHL call-ups Isaiah George, Travis Mitchell, and Marshall Warren in Romanov’s absence, there’s value in his versatility – he’s played plenty on the right side in his career with no real adverse effects. There’s also a benefit for the Isles’ budgeters in his contract structure. While he counts for $3.25MM against the cap, he’s only owed $2.5MM in actual salary this season as a result of his frontloaded deal.
