Like most other Rangers, Braden Schneider hasn’t had the start to the 2025-26 season he was hoping for. The right-shot defenseman is averaging career-high ice time but has made a negligible impact offensively and has seen his possession metrics remain underwater. Nevertheless, teams are calling the Rangers to ask if he’s available for trade as their season-opening mire continues, according to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period.
A first-round pick in 2020, Schneider emerged as an NHL regular midway through the 2021-22 campaign and never looked back. In 297 career appearances, he’s logged 18 goals, 53 assists, 71 points, and a +17 rating. He seemed to generate significant forward momentum in his development last year, when the Rangers swapped out Jacob Trouba for William Borgen in separate trades, creating a small opening for him to move up the depth chart. While the Blueshirts missed the playoffs in 2024-25, that didn’t stop Schneider from recording a career-best 6-15–21 scoring line and a +9 rating in 80 games.
This season, Schneider has remained in third-pairing duties behind Borgen on the depth chart but is beginning to see some power-play reps, explaining the bump in ice time to above 18 minutes per game. Nonetheless, he’s been saddled with the underperforming Urho Vaakanainen at even strength, leading to some ugly outputs. His -5 rating is the worst on the team among defensemen, although his 50.5 CF% is higher than Borgen’s and Carson Soucy’s in a more taxing defensive workload. In fact, the Rangers are deploying the Vaakanainen-Schneider pairing almost exclusively as a shutdown unit, starting more than 70% of their shifts in the defensive zone.
That extreme deployment, particularly on a team averaging just 2.18 goals per game, virtually guarantees a low point total and negative rating for Schneider, who’s only logged two assists through 11 games. The Rangers have increasingly saddled the 6’3″ righty with more challenging defensive assignments over the course of his five-year career, but it’s clear they’re pushing him past the point of peak effectiveness, at least early on.
If other teams are catching onto that, Schneider could be a sneaky pickup if given more minutes in more favorable deployment. The Rangers have hesitated to move him in the past when he was still one of their top prospects, but with him now fully aged out of the pool and their championship contention window nearly closed, there could be a willingness to let him go as part of a larger sell-off.
There’s also the matter of Schneider’s contract status. He’s a pending restricted free agent due a qualifying offer of $2.64MM. The Blueshirts or any other team likely wouldn’t have many qualms about committing that cap space to him, but it’s a potential arbitration award that could scare the Rangers off if there’s a large enough gap in extension talks.
