In a late-night move, the New York Rangers added even more goaltending depth to their organization, acquiring Jean-Francois Berube from the Philadelphia Flyers. The Flyers will receive future considerations. Berube will stay in the minor leagues, giving the Hartford Wolf Pack another option with Igor Shesterkin staying in the NHL.
As expected, those future considerations are actually an AHL trade between the two organizations. The Hartford Wolf Pack have sent Tom McCollum and Lewis Zerter-Gossage to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Players on AHL deals cannot be including in an NHL trade, meaning the teams needed to use the “future” tag.
For the Flyers, this will open up some playing time for prospect Kirill Ustimenko while still giving their lower minors an established professional goaltender in McCollum. As we mentioned recently in their deadline primer, Ustimenko has some impressive upside and is regarded well as a goaltending prospect. In 31 games for the Reading Royals of the ECHL he has a .919 save percentage.
cue the rangers selling high on their goalie depth rumours.
It makes perfect sense honestly bc they don’t really need to trade anyone except Henrik & he’s not going anywhere. If they don’t get a good package for Georgiev, just wait out Lundqvists contract since they’re technical still in a rebuild. The ideal plan has to be to keep the 2 young Russians for the future.
I think its more likely that Georgiev gets moved in the offseason. The Rangers cap space will be somewhat limited and if Georgiev’s contract demand is high, they’ll have to move him. I imagine it would also be a hard sell trying to convince all three goaltenders to buy into a 3-way split of playing time.
Don’t forget they also have the kid Wall at UMass Lowell who is currently the top college goalie at the moment
He’s at least 3 years away from being NHL ready