The Rangers made their second trade in as many weeks on Sunday, acquiring Tyler Motte from the Ottawa Senators for Julien Gauthier and a conditional seventh-round draft pick in 2023.
This will mark his second stint with the Rangers, who acquired him last season around the NHL trade deadline from the Vancouver Canucks. He appeared in nine regular-season games for the Blueshirts and helped them reach the Eastern Conference Final where they lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Now, he returns to the Big Apple with nine points (3 goals, 6 assists) in 38 games for Ottawa this season. The Rangers hope he can help them make another run this time around. He isn’t known as a goal scorer, but his bottom-six contributions can be a big help — especially on the penalty kill.
It appeared that a trade would be coming in the near future after Motte was held out of Sunday’s game between the Senators and St. Louis Blues for “trade-related reasons.” The Rangers had been in the mix, but Larry Brooks from the New York post reported that the asking price was higher than the fourth-round pick that the Rangers gave up to get him from Vancouver last year.
That clearly ended up being the case with Gauthier and a seventh-round pick headed back to Ottaway in the deal.
Gauthier has appeared in 40 games this year for the Rangers and had six goals and three assists in that span for New York. He was originally acquired by the Rangers in 2020 when he was picked up in a deal with the Carolina Hurricanes.
If the Rangers do end up advancing past the first round of the playoffs this year, the pick will improve to the lower of the Rangers’ or the Winnipeg Jets’ 2023 sixth-round selection. The Rangers own a sixth-round pick from the Jets from last year’s trade that brought Andrew Copp to Broadway.
