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Official: Rangers Trade Mazanec to Canucks for Draft Pick

The New York Rangers have traded goaltender Marek Mazanec to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a 2020 seventh-round pick, the team announced on Tuesday.

Mazanec, 27, was signed as a free agent out of the KHL last season and played in 40 games for the Hartford Wolf Pack in the AHL.

Vancouver is currently enduring a mini-crisis in net, with Thatcher Demko and Richard Bachman out with injuries. The Canucks were forced to recall 19-year-old Michel DiPietro from the OHL, and he was overwhelmed in his first career start on Monday against the Sharks. Mazanec has 31 games of NHL experience, and this move gives them a temporary stopgap.

For the Rangers, this move serves two purposes. Most notably, the trade permanently opens up a spot on the AHL roster for goaltending prospect Brandon Halverson. Halverson, 22, has been outright dominant in the ECHL with the Maine Mariners this season, posting a .924 save percentage in 30 games. A restricted free agent this summer, the former second-round pick now has one last chance to re-establish himself as a noteworthy prospect and extend his future with the organization.

The Rangers also acquire a draft pick for a player who was nothing more than AHL depth. Along with the pick acquired from Nashville for Cody McLeod, as well as their own natural selection, this gives the Rangers three seventh-round picks in the 2020 draft.

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