Rangers Wanted a Defenseman in Return for Kaapo Kakko
Pierre LeBrun, TSN Hockey Insider, joined Jay Onrait on SportsCenter on Wednesday evening and was asked about the trade of Kaapo Kakko by the New York Rangers to the Seattle Kraken and who benefits most from it.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Jay Onrait: “New York Rangers have traded Kaapo Kakko to the Seattle Kraken for defenseman Will Borgen in a third and sixth-round pick of the 2025 NHL Draft. This comes a day after the 2019 second-overall pick was very outspoken about being a healthy scratch Sunday. Kakko 14 points in 30 games this season.
Here’s our friend Pierre LeBrun, our hockey analyst, to talk about a number of things, including Pierre this Kakko trade that I think we all saw coming. But boy, did it happen fast. Scratched on Sunday, outspoken about it afterward. Three days later, he’s off to Seattle. What was your reaction to the trade, and who do you think might be next?”
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Pierre LeBrun: “Yeah, well, first of all, Jay, you know, we’re not surprised, but not so much because of how spoken he was at being scratched. I mean, that’s the obvious reaction to the reality is, let’s give some credit here to my good friend Darren Dreger, who was the first insider a number of weeks ago on Insider Trading, to say this guy’s on the market again, Kaapo Kakko and he might get traded.
And at the time, I think that it caught some people by surprise, because the focus was so much on (Jacob) Trouba and on (Chris) Kreider, and the memo that Chris Drury had sent out, of course, Trouba was traded. But the reality is, the Rangers have been talking to teams on Kakko for quite a while, way before he got scratched on the weekend and way before he had his comments about feeling like he got singled out unfairly.
So this wasn’t a reactionary trade, I guess is what I’m trying to say. It’s been weeks in the making. And listen, there were a number of teams that wanted to get their hands on Kakko, who’s been disappointing for the most part, in terms of not finding consistency in his game, given his pedigree, since he’s been a Ranger. But a lot of teams really wanted the chance to get the 2.0 version and hope that a reset and a refresh could be good for him with them.
That’s why Seattle has been on him for a while, and I know from exchanging messages with the Kraken tonight, like they’re pretty excited. They think that he can find his game in Seattle. They certainly hope he can and if they do, the ceiling play on this trade is for Seattle, not as much for the Rangers.
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They got a good defenseman in Will Borgen and of course, and it’s hard to trade for a defenseman, and they need a defenseman after trading Trouba. But the reality is, the ceiling play here is definitely for Ron Francis and the Seattle Kraken.
But one of the things that I heard from, from one of the teams who also wanted to get in on Kakko is that they didn’t have a defenseman to trade the Rangers. The Rangers have made it clear the teams calling on Kakko, we need a D back, and Seattle was able to step up there.
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