2025 Rangers Report Card: Carson Soucy

This post is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2024-25 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

Expectations

As New York Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury attempted to “thread the needle” ahead of the 2024-25 trade deadline by dealing away pending unrestricted free agents while also acquiring pieces that could help in both the short- and medium-term, one of the players he brought into the fold was defenseman Carson Soucy.

To acquire Soucy from the Vancouver Canucks, Drury dealt away the 2025 San Jose Sharks third round pick that he had acquired earlier that same day as part of the deal that sent forward Reilly Smith to the Vegas Golden Knights.

The idea was that Soucy could be another option to fill the role vacated by the trade of Ryan Lindgren to the Colorado Avalanche—and, hopefully, do so with a bit more efficacy than Lindgren had produced late in his Blueshirts tenure. He is also under contract for $3.25 million next season, meaning this would be more than just a stop-gap role for the remainder of this season.

We all know that Drury and the Rangers—and most other organizations, for that matter—love players with size, often to a fault. Soucy stands at 6-5 and 208 pounds, so he certainly checks that box. He is (or is at least supposed to be) a stay-at-home, defensive defenseman.

Soucy, 30, had been experiencing a rough season on a Canucks team that, not unlike the Rangers, had been dealing with some high-profile tumult throughout the season (which in part led to the Rangers acquiring J.T. Miller). Just the prior season, Soucy had graded out well analytically, so there was some hope that a change of scenery would help him rediscover that form and that he could give the Rangers some strong depth on the back end.

Performance

As it turned out, Soucy was a net-negative for the Rangers. By the eye test, as a defender, he did not rediscover last season’s form, and seemed to be caught out of position in his own end numerous times, exacerbating a season-long trend of brain-dead defending from the Blueshirts.

At first glance, the underlying numbers seem to disagree with this notion. After all, with Soucy on the ice at five-on-five, the Rangers actually finished above water in terms of expected goal percentage (53.24 percent) and share of shot attempts (53.94 percent), and broke even in share of high-danger chances (42 for, 42 against).

A closer look, however, reveals that this wasn’t really Soucy’s doing at all. Rather, he was being carried by Adam Fox, who undeservedly became some fans’ whipping boy this season, particularly following a less-than-stellar showing for Team USA in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament.

Regardless of that small sample showing, Fox is far and away the Rangers’ best defenseman, and one of the best in the entire league. He dragged Lindgren around as best he could, but often couldn’t avoid flailing because of his partner’s deficiencies.

Getting back to Soucy, the Rangers saw him not just as a depth piece, but as Fox’s new partner, instead of going back to what was working early in the season—Fox with K’Andre Miller.

Most of Soucy’s 5v5 minutes (146:37 out of 251:22) saw him paired with Fox. In his minutes with Fox, the Rangers were very strong: 63.28 percent of the expected goals, 59.86 percent of the shot share, and a stellar 71.74 percent of the high-danger chance share.

Without Fox? Well…yikes. In 104:45 of Soucy ice time without Fox rescuing him, the Rangers held a putrid 36.77 percent of the expected goal share, 44.44 percent of the shot attempt share, and (gulp) 23.68 percent of the high-danger chance share. The chart below paints this stark contrast with great clarity.

If that isn’t enough, the Rangers yielded 16.61 high-danger chances per 60 minutes when Soucy was on the ice at 5v5 without Fox. For context, that rate is worse than the overall rate (i.e., counting all ice time with and without all players) for anyone on the entire team who played at least 100 5v5 minutes, except for Juuso Parssinen. And, unless you didn’t pay attention to the Rangers at all this season, you know that they were an atrocious defensive team! So it’s a real accomplishment (derogatory) to bleed high-danger chances at this prolific of a rate.

As for Drury, he was correct to free the Rangers of the costly contracts and equally costly on-ice play of Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba—the manner in which he went about executing each transaction notwithstanding. He was also correct to trade away Lindgren. The problem, however, is that his whole “threading the needle” approach was misguided from the start.

“Threading the needle” is not the way to go when your team is not good. You need to pick a direction. Buy or sell. Not both. “Threading the needle” leads to half-measures, which are just going to keep a mediocre team stuck in mediocrity—the worst place you can be. I guess Drury never watched Breaking Bad.

Instead of taking a more patient approach (i.e., a more complete rebuild, or banking cap space to use when there is an opportunity to acquire truly impactful players who can be part of a new core to build around) Drury ended up replacing some of the mediocrity on his roster—namely Goodrow, Trouba, and Lindgren—with more mediocrity—Soucy, Parssinen, Will Borgen, Urho Vaakanainen. The Rangers’ blue line (after Fox) was largely a disaster this past season. But Drury has already locked in Soucy and Vaakanainen for next season, and Borgen—incredibly—through 2028.

The Rangers need difference-makers—the kinds who can drive play and tilt the ice in their favor. They need someone to play with Fox who isn’t just Fox’s passenger, but someone who can do some heavy lifting in his own right.

Soucy and Fox were a fine pairing together, but again, that was all Fox. Perhaps Soucy deserves a modicum of credit for not massively messing things up when he was with Fox, as the pair had a positive combined impact. In any event, Soucy himself couldn’t move the needle positively without an elite partner. Heck, he couldn’t even tread water in that situation. At this point, the Rangers only have one elite player on their blue line. Their room to add more is limited thanks to Drury backing himself into a corner just after he had broken free from another one. But hey, at least Soucy is tall.

Grade

Author Grade: D+

Banter Consensus: C-

Final Evaluation

Soucy got off to a great start, scoring a goal in his first game with the Rangers (he would add two assists for a total of three points in 16 games with the Blueshirts). Beyond that, however, he was a letdown. He was able to spend much of his time with the Rangers hiding behind the brilliance of Fox, but when he didn’t have that luxury, his deficiencies were all too plain to see. He ultimately failed to meet the expectation of being a reasonably steadying depth presence. He joins a long list of big Rangers defensemen (Patrik Nemeth, Ben Harpur, Jarred Tinordi, Niko Mikkola, etc.) who have largely underwhelmed in New York. Maybe he can be better next year. Or, better yet, maybe Drury can find a way to jettison him and use the cap space and roster spot on an actual needle-mover.

Stats via Natural Stat Trick