New York Islanders Metropolitan Division Gets Better With Trades and Draft

The Metropolitan Division just got much better over the last week with a few key trades and draft picks. None of them involving the New York Islanders, unfortunately.

It’s been a busy few weeks for the New York Islanders. They re-signed both Brock Nelson and Jordan Eberle to good long-term deals. They won two awards with Robin Lehner taking the Masterton Trophy and Barry Trotz taking the Jack Adams Trophy at the NHL Awards ceremony.

But it’s been pretty quiet since then for the Islanders who are still hoping to re-sign UFAs Anders Lee and Robin Lehner and hopefully add a top-six forward.

Meanwhile, two divisional rivals the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils made a few trades and got a few draft picks that will make them better in 2019-2020.

New Jersey Devils

With the first pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, the New Jersey Devils selected center Jack Hughes from the US National Development Program. In 74 games between the USNTDP junior team and the U18 team, Hughes scored an incredible 160 points. Or 2.16 points per game.

He’s quick, shifty, and has elite skill and an equally elite hockey IQ. He was the consensus number one in the draft for a reason. Alongside Taylor Hall and Nico Hischier, the Devils have some outstanding talent up front.

And then they went and traded Steve Santini, Jeremy Davies and two draft picks (2019 and 2020 second round) for defenseman PK Subban. That’s right, Norris trophy winning PK Subban is now with the Devils. And they lost two guys you’ve never heard of and two seconds for him. Wild.

The Devils now have top-tier quality both up front and on the back-end. Don’t expect the Devils to be as bad as they were last season.

New York Rangers

We knew the Rangers we’re rebuilding. They stated so in a letter to fans last season. But if you thought the Rangers would take a number of years to get back in the mix within the Metro, just wait.

Leading up to the draft, the Rangers acquired 50 point defenseman Jacob Trouba from the Winnipeg Jets for Neal Pionk and the 20th overall pick (originally Winnipeg’s). The Rangers turned an OK blueline with Brady Skjei, Kevin Shattenkirk, and Adam Fox, into a good one by adding Trouba for almost nothing.

Thanks to a 78 point season, the New York Rangers were well placed to move up in the draft lottery with a 7.8 percent chance of picking second. Lady luck smiled on the Rangers and they moved up from sixth to second.

With the second overall pick, they took Finnish forward Kaapo Kakko who not only scored 38 points playing against men in Finland’s Liiga, but powered Finland to a World Championship this summer.

The Rangers still have some work to do. But they’ve turned things around rather quickly by adding Trouba and then Kakki. They won’t be a 36 loss team again in 2019-20.

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The Metropolitan Division will certainly be more competitive next season than it was last year, but I’m not worried for the New York Islanders. They’re still a good team and have a brain trust in Lou Lamoriello that can bring in the quality they need to continue winning.

The Metropolitan Division has always been a gauntlet, but the now the two worst teams from 2019-20 just got a lot better seemingly overnight.