{"id":429953,"date":"2026-01-27T02:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T02:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/429953\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T02:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T02:48:15","slug":"new-york-islanders-to-acquire-carson-soucy-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/429953\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Islanders To Acquire Carson Soucy \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

7:10 p.m.: While no deal has been officially completed to this point, ESPN\u2019s Emily Kaplan reports<\/a> that the Rangers will receive a 2026 third-round pick from the Islanders in exchange for the veteran defenseman. That\u2019s identical to the price the Rangers paid the Canucks to acquire Soucy<\/a> in March of last year.<\/p>\n

Soucy was held out of the Rangers\u2019 lineup for their game tonight against the Boston Bruins for \u201croster management reasons,\u201d a source with knowledge of the situation told Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press<\/a>. Again, while no trade has been officially announced, it appears overwhelmingly likely that Soucy will end up an Islander at some point in the very near future.<\/p>\n

The Rangers also made two roster moves<\/a> today to prepare themselves for the loss of Soucy. New York sent spare forward Anton Blidh back down to their AHL affiliate, the Hartford Wolf Pack, and recalled veteran blueliner Connor Mackey. Mackey\u2019s recall gives New York a seventh defenseman for its active roster once Soucy is officially transferred to the Islanders.<\/p>\n

12:20 p.m.: The Rangers and Islanders are deep in talks on a deal that would send defenseman\u00a0Carson Soucy<\/a>\u00a0across town to Elmont, Vince Z. Mercogliano of The Athletic<\/a> reports. If the trade doesn\u2019t get materialized today, Soucy has still played his last game as a Blueshirt \u2013 he\u2019ll be scratched for tonight\u2019s game against the Bruins to protect him from an injury, Mercogliano said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Since then, Soucy hasn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0William Borgen<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Braden Schneider<\/a>, have both controlled a team-worst 42.4% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck<\/a>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Soucy was a great two-way piece lower on Seattle\u2019s 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\u20194\u2033, 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\u2019s lost high-paid shutdown threat\u00a0Alexander Romanov<\/a>\u00a0for virtually the entire season due to a shoulder injury. With righty\u00a0Ryan Pulock<\/a>\u00a0now also dealing with an upper-body injury<\/a>, Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche<\/a> won\u2019t play the waiting game as the Isles gun for a playoff berth in the first year of the\u00a0Matthew Schaefer<\/a>\u00a0era.<\/p>\n

While Soucy\u2019s acquisition is clearly targeted at ending the third-pairing lefty rotation that\u2019s fallen in the hands of AHL call-ups\u00a0Isaiah George<\/a>,\u00a0Travis Mitchell<\/a>, and\u00a0Marshall Warren<\/a> in Romanov\u2019s absence, there\u2019s value in his versatility \u2013 he\u2019s played plenty on the right side in his career with no real adverse effects. There\u2019s also a benefit for the Isles\u2019 budgeters in his contract structure. While he counts for $3.25MM against the cap, he\u2019s only owed $2.5MM in actual salary this season as a result of his frontloaded deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"7:10 p.m.: While no deal has been officially completed to this point, ESPN\u2019s Emily Kaplan reports that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5901,5,159,35,30],"class_list":{"0":"post-429953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-carson-soucy","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-new-york-islanders","11":"tag-new-york-rangers","12":"tag-newsstand"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115964785744933027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}