The Rangers Need To See More From A Player Who Chris Drury Really Believed In

This upcoming season, the New York Rangers will need more out of Carson Soucy. 

At around the time of the NHL Trade Deadline last season, the Rangers acquired Soucy from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a 2025 third-round pick.

With Soucy under contract until the summer of 2026, the plan was for him to become a staple and key defenseman on the team’s blueline moving forward. 

It wasn’t just a rental trade; Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury believed Soucy could be a core piece for the Rangers. 

“He’s someone we could have in for the rest of the year and next year,” Drury said of Soucy upon acquiring him. “I just like the overall game – the size, the skating, the sense, how he defends. We were able to do some homework on him the last couple weeks and we’re excited to get him with a piece we got in the Reilly Smith trade.”

Unfortunately for the Blueshirts, Soucy struggled out of the gate to the point where he was even scratched out of the lineup for a small period of time. 

The 31-year-old defenseman didn’t seem to provide the immediate impact that Drury envisioned, as his long-term future with the team was in question. 

To start the offseason, Soucy’s name was floated around in trade rumors, and his status in New York looked to be murky. 

However, Soucy ultimately was not traded, and he remains with the Rangers, just a few weeks away from the start of training camp. 

There’s still an expectation for Soucy to serve an important role for the Rangers. 

He’ll either play on the second pairing alongside Will Borgen, or Braden Schneider will move to the left side in order to play a top-four role, moving Soucy down to the third pairing. 

Either way, Soucy has proven in the past that he can be a reliable shut-down defenseman, and if he raises his game to those levels, there’s no doubt he can make a substantial impact.