Reviewing the Mark Messier trade tree from NYR to SJ
By Conor Power
What about that second-rounder?
Oh, that pesky old thing. Well, it’s funny you should mention it because the Rangers actually traded that away too. Now, this is a little forced in here because the 2nd rounder is not the point of this deal, but it is still related to this trade tree so I’m going to include it because you can technically link these pieces all the way back to the Messier trade to San Jose in 2003.
New York sends that 2nd round pick, a 2016 1st rounder, Anthony Duclair, and John Moore to Arizona in exchange for a 2016 4th round pick, Chris Summers, and Keith Yandle. I’ll start with Summers. He played six games for New York. He was never traded so that branch ends there, but there is a lot still to go with this active part of the trade tree.
That 2016 4th rounder was used to select Finnish defenseman Tarmo Reunanen. Reunanen would play four games for the New York Rangers, but he would only record one assist. Struggling forever to make the team, he was eventually dealt to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for Maxim Letunov at this year’s AHL trade deadline. All of this links back to a deal from 2003 by the way.
Finally, we get to Yandle. Yandle would play two seasons with the Rangers recording seven goals and 51 assists for 58 points in 107 games. Not too bad. He would average around 20 minutes a night in New York, and he would play every game he could on his way to collecting the record for the longest consecutive games played streak ever, it would be snapped at the end of last season, however.