Grading the Vincent Trocheck Trade: Rangers continue defensive reset while Mammoth load up top six
July 1 is Canada Day up north, but it’s an all-day news marathon for the rest of us. The opening day of free agency never fails to transform the NHL landscape.
It’s also prime time for nascent contenders and retooling clubs alike to get their trade on after taking the pulse of who needs what around the league. The Utah Mammoth and New York Rangers fit those respective descriptions, and linked up for a trade that saw one of the longest-tenured targets, Vincent Trocheck, finally bid adieu to the Big Apple.
The Rangers were unwilling to offload Trochek, long coveted as a 2C by top teams for his right shot, faceoff acumen, two-way play, etc., near the deadline in the hopes teams would spend more freely for his services during the offseason. Whether or not Utah’s offer was the sort of return Chris Drury initially expected, Trocheck is finally on the move after months of speculation.
Did Drury, who has fared poorly in high-profile trades before, get this one right? Or will the ‘Troch’ deal become another stain on the embattled executive’s reputation? Only one way to find out: the first Daily Faceoff Trade Grades of the new league year!
New York Rangers
Receive:
D Sean Durzi, 27 – $6-million cap hit through 2028
C Cole Beaudoin, 20 – $941, 667 cap hit through 2029
2027 third-round pick (UTA)
The typically inflated value of the center position and Trocheck’s ability to play it well on a bargain $5.625-million cap hit might lead to some disappointed double takes from Ranger fans. “That’s all?” Take a step back, though, and what might have been Drury’s latest act of charity could end up being a well-timed cash-in on a depreciating asset.
There are reasonable factors that would have somewhat capped Trocheck’s value. The player had previously expressed a willingness to use his trade protection. He turns 33 in just over a week, and his physicality and below-average size mean there have been some hard miles along the way. Though the Olympic gold medalist still scores in line with his career averages (23 G, 60 P per 82 GP), it’s hard to figure out if his decaying defensive impacts are down to the Rangers’ overall sloppiness or one of its causes.
Drury would have been taking a massive risk by holding onto Trocheck until midway through the offseason, when the presumably few teams he’d play ball with might have found another solution at center. Keeping a player he had so clearly shopped around until the next trade deadline would come with its own set of headaches.
Instead, the Ranger brain trust sold “Troch,” who could have nixed any move, on a Western team, which initially seemed unlikely. They picked up some nifty pieces, too.
Durzi hasn’t played a fully healthy season with significant power-play responsibilities since 2023-24 (41 P, 22:23 ATOI in 76 GP), and the raw stats since then won’t blow your hair back. Still, the Mammoth generated nearly 3 expected goals per 60 minutes with Durzi on the ice over the past two seasons. He is the sort of slick, mobile defender the Blue Shirts have long needed.
Brilliant franchise defenseman Adam Fox won’t leave a ton of opportunities for Durzi on the man advantage. Still, the latter’s skill is nonetheless sorely needed in a group that has struggled mightily to break the puck out over the past two seasons.
Durzi, who can be cavalier with his passing, will never be mistaken for Rod Langway. A partnership with either proven shutdown option Vadislov Gavrikov, briefly his teammate in L.A., or Marcus Pettersson, a reliable option acquired in a separate trade, would mitigate those concerns. If the Rangers blue line starts the season with pairs of Gavrikov-Fox and Pettersson-Durzi, it will be the most coherent defense corps iced at Madison Square Garden during the Drury era.
Then there’s Beaudoin, a promising player who, like Liam Greentree, is a good bet to stick in the pros this season after bullying his way through the OHL with 43 goals and 117 points in 69 combined regular-season and postseason games.
The 24th overall selection by Utah in 2024, Beaudoin is a 20-year-old in a grown man’s body (6’2, 211 lbs) who shouldn’t take long to outgrow the AHL. “Beaudoin is a physical beast,” says Daly Faceoff prospect guru Steven Ellis. “He has high-end hockey sense and makes up for so-so skating by hitting everyone in sight and being difficult to play against. I don’t think it will take him long to be NHL-ready.”
For some, the bottom line on Drury’s July 1 will be that he lost Trocheck, a 2030 first-rounder (for Pettersson), and cap space mere months after penning a defeatist “retool” letter. They’d be allowing their bias against a GM who has admittedly blown previous big-ticket trades to color their perspective. It’s not earth-shattering, but the return for Trocheck will help the Rangers now and later.
Grade: B
Utah Mammoth
Receive:
C Vincent Trocheck, 32 – $5.625 cap hit through 2029
I outlined some red flags around Trocheck’s game as he wades deeper into his 30s in the Rangers section of this piece, and his defensive impact has always been slightly overstated by his work rate and short-handed threat. That doesn’t make it unreasonable to think he could again become the sort of play-driving beast he was in the first half of his New York tenure in a more stable on-ice environment. He’d struggle to find a less stable one than the Rangers of 2024-25, when Peter Laviolette’s defensive structure, if you could call it that, totally collapsed, or the 2025-26 version, which saw Drury saddle Trocheck’s Team USA coach Mike Sullivan with a top-heavy, unmotivated roster.
Though Trocheck is getting long in the tooth, he hasn’t actually lost anything in the foot speed department, where he still ranks in the upper echelon of forwards across the board, per NHL EDGE. An elite faceoff man who helped prevent the Rangers’ PK from ranking any lower than 14th during his tenure, perhaps Trocheck can get back to being a top two-way operator on a team where he can delegate some of the rough stuff he chases, often to his detriment, to monsters like Lawson Crouse and Jack McBain.
At the other end of the ice, Trocheck has been remarkably consistent throughout his career, a 60-point guy save for a pair of 75+ point spikes in 2017-18 (with FLA) and during New York’s 2024 Presidents’ Trophy charge. Could he have another one of those outbursts in him on a tenth-ranked Utah attack with room to improve?
Trocheck’s most obvious place in the Mammoth lineup would be between Nick Schmaltz, who spent most of last season at center, and Clayton Keller, two crafty playmakers with years of chemistry between them. A tough, play-driving center with the speed and skill to keep up with them on the rush has eluded Keller and Schmaltz for years, and they still combined for 59 goals and 162 points in 2025-26. Trocheck could complete a dangerous veteran trifecta with the duo.
Even if Trocheck’s defensive instincts have deteriorated over the years and another 70-point season at age 33 is a pipe dream, Utah boss Bill Armstrong still nabbed a quick, consistent second-line center who wins draws and brings all the intangibles old-school hockey guys salivate over to the table, and at a cap hit a player half as good as Trocheck would scoff at in free agency.
Though Durzi and Beaudoin filled the Rangers’ need for a puckmover and a long-term solution at center behind aging pivots J.T. Miller and Mika Zibanejad, neither was indispensable to Armstrong, whose trade for veteran stopper MacKenzie Weegar at the deadline dropped the handsomely paid Durzi to third on the right-side depth chart behind Weegar and no-nonsense defender John Marino. Beaudoin, meanwhile, ranked firmly behind Caleb Desnoyers, another high-character center with far more offensive upside, in Utah’s pipeline.
Armstrong has been making aggressive trades in the hopes of allowing his Mammoth to swim with the sharks of the Central Division for 24 months now. His latest additions to the top six, Trocheck and long-time Islander captain Anders Lee, mean he’s closer than ever to achieving that goal without having ever needed to smash the piggy bank or sell the farm along the way.
Grade: A-