The Arizona Coyotes made a big splash by acquiring center Derek Stepan and goaltender Antii Raanta from the New York Rangers in exchange for a first-round pick in 2017 and prospect Anthony DeAngelo. When the rumors surfaced that Derek Stepan was on the trading block, the Arizona Coyotes were immediately interested and wound up winning the sweepstakes for him. This is a quick synopsis of how this trade will impact both teams.
Let’s first start with the Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes are a rebuilding team without a ton of veteran players. With Radim Vrbata moving on to the Panthers and Shane Doan available in free agency, the offense will need an experienced leader; that leader should be Derek Stepan. He will be the first line center and his wingers will likely be Brendan Perlini on the left and Anthony Duclair on the right. Perlini is developing into a natural goal-scorer while Duclair can score and pass. Stepan is a playmaker completing the line. With his passing ability, Perlini should be able to crack 20 goals for this upcoming season after scoring 14 last year and Duclair’s amount of points should also improve. After scoring 4 goals on the power play and registering 14 power play assists this season, .Stepan should be able to help with the power play that finished 26th in the league. Overall, Stepan finished the season with 17 goals and 38 assists for 55 points in 82 games. As for Antii Raanta, he should be happy, playing in Arizona. Raanta will likely be the team’s starting goaltender and rightly so. He finished the 2016-2017 season with a record of 16-8-2, 4 shutouts, a goals against average of 2.16, and save percentage of .922. After trading Mike Smith to the Calgary Flames, the Coyotes were in dire need of a new starter and Raanta should be the guy with Louis Domingue the backup goaltender.
Before analyzing the New York Ranger’s side of this trade, everyone must take into consideration the Blue Shirts freed up $7.5 million in cap space with this trade. This allowed them to sign their unrestricted free agents as well as go after defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk in free agency. The Rangers were interested in acquiring Shattenkirk during the season and on July 1st they made a big splash signing him to a 4 year deal worth $26.6M. Anthony DeAngelo is an offensive defenseman. Last season he split time between the AHL and NHL but with the Coyotes he scored 5 goals and registered 9 assists for 14 points with +/- rating of -13. He still needs to improve defensively but in the future could make a great quarterback for the power play. The first-round pick the Rangers acquired was the seventh overall pick in the draft. They selected Lias Andersson from HV71 in Sweden. Andersson had 9 goals and 10 assists in 42 games which is solid for a young player in the SHL. He isn’t NHL-ready but with some training in the minors he could be available to be called up in a few years. The Rangers will have two great players to add to the roster in the next few years after this trade.