Rangers And Islanders Deal At The Deadline
Normally, seventh-place teams don’t make trades like this, but the Rangers are not a normal team. Constricted by the salary cap and in many ways built to win now, New York sent Petr Prucha, Nigel Dawes and Dmitri Kalinin to Phoenix in exchange for Derek Morris and draft picks to Toronto in exchange for Nik Antropov. Morris improves the defense and Antropov really improves the offense. Giving up on Dawes and Prucha is tough, but with their cap situation the Rangers probably would not have been able to resign them next year anyway. The Islanders traded their captain, Bill Guerin, to Pittsburgh in exchange for a conditional draft pick. It is initially a fifth-rounder, but could go as high as a third-rounder if the Penguins win a playoff round.
