Entering the 2014-15 NHL season, the New York Rangers were the class of the Eastern Conference, and a legit Stanley Cup contender. That was only more so when they acquired defenseman Keith Yandle ahead of the trade deadline.
So why did Yandle jump ship and leave the Rangers just two seasons later?
Let’s start from the beginning, well sort of. Ahead of 2014-15, the Rangers just came off of a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. They defeated the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins in consecutive epic seven-game wars in the first two rounds, before taking out the Montreal Canadiens in six emotional games in the Eastern Conference Final. Though the Rangers lost in five games to the Los Angeles Kings in the best-of-7 Stanley Cup Final, expectations were sky-high for the 2014-15 season.
The Rangers core was still largely intact, and in its collective prime. Rick Nash (30), Derick Brassard (27), Mats Zuccarello (27), Derek Stepan (24) and Chris Kreider (23) were all offensive pillars, while Ryan McDonagh (25), Dan Girardi (30) and Marc Staal (28) were considered long-term pieces on the blue line. New York also had a few “win-now” veterans in the mix, including 39-year old Martin St. Louis and 38-year old Dan Boyle.
Oh yeah, the Rangers also had this 32-year old goaltender named Henrik Lundqvist.
Keith Yandle trade helped Rangers win Presidents’ Trophy in 2014-15
On March 1, 2015, the Rangers entered the trade deadline as a really good team, looking to become a great team. At 38-17-6, the Rangers sat in second place in the Metropolitan Division, two points behind the neighboring New York Islanders. Wanting to supplement their core on defense, Rangers GM Glen Sather took a pretty big swing.
That day, the Rangers acquired Yandle, who had 41 points in 63 games at that point, along with Chris Summer and a fourth-round pick in 2016 from the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for 24-year old defenseman John Moore, 19-year old forward Anthony Duclair, a conditional first-round pick and a second round pick. It was a heavy price to pay, but a seemingly worthwhile gamble for a team trying to avenge their loss in the 2014 Cup Final.
After the trade, Yandle put up 11 points over the final 21 games of the regular season, helping the Rangers finish first in the division and win the Presidents’ Trophy for most points (113) in the NHL. He then added an additional 11 points in 19 Stanley Cup Playoff games, though the Rangers ultimately fell one win short of a second straight trip to the Cup Final, losing Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning on home ice at Madison Square Garden.
The Boston native returned to the Rangers in 2015-16, the final season of a five-year contract that he signed in 2011 as a member of the Coyotes. New York again reached the postseason, but only won a single game in the playoffs, bowing out in five games to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the best-of-7 first round series..
It was at that point that the Rangers began to make significant changes to their roster, signaling that this era — one that brought about a lot of winning, but did not yield that elusive Stanley Cup championship — was coming to an end. Derick Brassard was dealt to the Ottawa Senators, the deal that brought Mika Zibanejad to town. Eric Staal and Dominic Moore were among the players that left in free agency, and Dan Boyle chose to retire.
Then, there was the curious case of Yandle. Days before free agency, the Rangers traded him to the Florida Panthers for two draft picks, after which he signed a significant seven-year, $44.5 contract.
On a recent podcast appearance, Yandle shared some interesting insight about how, and why, that transaction came to be.
Keith Yandle on departing the Rangers in 2016: ‘I saw the team kind of going down’
Yandle appeared as a guest on a recent episode of Wingmen, the podcast hosted by brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk. As expected, Yandle was full of hilarious stories and one-liners, including a wild story about a prank that he and Kevin Hayes pulled with the Rangers on up-and-coming young forward J.T. Miller.
The conversation also included some interesting insight from Yandle about his decision to leave New York, and how he ended up in Florida without ever technically becoming an unrestricted free agent.
“Luckily for me that summer, the UFA d-men were like me, [Brent] Seabrook, [Dustin] Byfuglien, there might have been one other guy, and all of those guys had signed with their teams during the year,” Yandle explained. “And, I was kind of the biggest name left.”
As it turns out, Yandle already weighed his options for where he would land next, and someone in his circle was singing the praises of the Panthers for quite some time.
“My best friend, at the time, was working for the Panthers, and that whole year, all he would talk about was this kid [Aleksander] Barkov and this kid [Aron] Ekblad,” Yandle said. “[Jonathan] Huberdeau and [Vincent] Trochek, He was telling about all of these kids coming up.
“Obviously, living in Florida, I knew [that me] being from Boston, my wife’s from Boston, a lot of people visit down there. When I was in Florida, it seemed like every month, someone was in town, so it made a lot of sense logistically.”
The logic behind the change in location was sound, as was the desire to be a veteran on an up-and-coming team. Yandle was entering his age-30 season at the time, and likely viewed Florida as a team that was on the verge of competing for championships.
“I didn’t want to re-sign in New York, just because I saw the team kind of going down a little bit,” Yandle said. “Guys were leaving.
“I never even got to [unrestricted free agency]. New York offered me [a contract], and I said no. And then, they asked me where I wanted to sign, and I told them Florida, so they traded my rights to Florida. So, I never even was a UFA. We got it done before July 1.”
You can watch the full exchange here:
Yandle played the next five seasons in Florida, totaling 231 points in 371 regular-season games. On July 15, 2021, the Panthers bought out the final two seasons of the seven-year contract he signed back in 2016.
He went on to play 77 games with the Flyers in 2021-22, finishing with a shocking minus-47 plus/minus mark, and retired following that season.
Along the way, Yandle put together the longest Ironman streak in NHL history, playing 989 consecutive games between March 26, 2009, and March 29, 2022. Since he retired, two players passed his record — Phil Kessel (1,064 consecutive games played) and Brent Burns, whose active streak sits at 1,017 straight games.
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