New York Rangers: Goodbye, Neal Pionk

On June 17th, 2019, the New York Rangers sent Neal Pionk with the 20th overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft to the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for a huge defensive asset in Jacob Trouba. While this deal is obviously great for the Rangers, we’d like to say a proper goodbye to our young defenseman.

Oh, Neal Pionk…we hardly knew ye.  In all seriousness, there’s no doubting that this swap was a phenomenal move for the New York Rangers to make. Jacob Trouba could practically change the entire defensive makeup of this team, and he hasn’t even hit the ice at Madison Square Garden yet.

However, the Rangers also lost a defenseman with quite a bit of potential in Neal Pionk. He didn’t appear to be a superstar, but he definitely made his mark on Broadway before he left.

The New York Rangers signed Neal Pionk on May 1, 2017. Though he was undrafted, the Rangers were impressed by his sophomore season at the University of Minnesota Duluth, including 34 points (seven goals and 27 assists) and finishing fifth among NCAA blueliners in scoring.

He began playing for the Rangers during the 2017-2018 season. During that campaign, he had one goal and thirteen assists for 14 points in 28 games.

The defenseman was playing at a 0.5 point-per-game pace,  great for a player just starting out in the league. Despite playing fewer games than his teammates, he was fourth in assists and  points among Rangers defensemen.

This past season, he spent most of the season on the top defensive pair with Marc Staal.  He appeared in 73 games, a healthy scratch in only a handful of games.  He averaged 21 minutes of ice time a game, second highest on the team.

He finished the season with six goals and 20 assists for 26 points, career highs in all three categories. On the team, he ranked second in goals and third in assist and points among defensemen.

The more consistent playing time and increase in games definitely helped his performance, but he still was not in the good graces of many fans. Pionk saw a lot of ice time in general, but specifically power play time, which he (arguably) was not ready for.  He still scored half of his points with the man advantage.

He was looked down upon this season for his inconsistency going four or more games without a point five separate times this year. Furthermore, he is still only 23 years old and this was his second season in the NHL, as well as his first full one, so he was still making some “rookie” mistakes that young defensemen often do.

If anything, he was overplayed by rookie coach David Quinn and it was clear that he wore down as the season progressed.   That inevitably contributed to his inconsistency and led to more mistakes throughout the year.

While Neal Pionk will most likely only be remembered as a piece in the Jacob Trouba trade that furthered the rebuild and youth movement, it can definitely be argued that he meant more to the New York Rangers than that. Albeit frustrating at times, countless other times he was fun and exciting to watch, one of the many players giving fans hope as a new era approaches.

We’ll leave you with what was probably the best individual effort by a Ranger this season and it was Neal Pionk who did it.