2026 Rangers Report Card: Carson Soucy

This article is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2025-26 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

To read the Season Preview for Carson Soucy, go here.

When the New York Rangers, somewhat peculiarly, acquired Carson Soucy just before the 2025 NHL trade deadline, the hope was that he could recover some of what he had with Will Borgen as a defense partner during his years with the Seattle Kraken.

There were reasons to be very cautiously optimistic about that. Soucy had been, shall we say, not very good in Vancouver before coming to the Rangers. In his defense, the Vancouver Canucks and just about everyone on that roster had been not very good. That's because Vancouver was in the beginning stages of a free-fall that would land them last place in the NHL this season.

And, as I had pointed out in the Season Preview for Soucy, he'd been fine with Borgen in Seattle. Not great, not terrible, but serviceable. There was some reason to hope that they could reestablish what they'd had and improve on it and provide some perfectly serviceable second-pairing defense for the Rangers.

In the end, Soucy found himself finishing the season on New York's other team. For Rangers fans, the greatest utility of his parts of two seasons with the Rangers will be for people who play Puckdoku.

Expectations

Allow myself to quote myself:

The main value that Soucy brings to the 2025-26 New York Rangers is his value vis-à-vis his contract. He is entering the final year of a 3 year, $3.25 million AAV deal. This cap hit number came in for a fair bit a scorn when Soucy was acquired and when his early returns did not pass the eye test for most people. But, in light of some of the contracts doled out to free agents this offseason (::cough cough:: 4 years, $4.5 million for Cody Ceci ::cough cough::) the contract/cap hit looks like a good deal.

The biggest question is, with whom will Soucy play them majority of this year?

Since I name-checked Cody Ceci, let's take a look at how the two compared:

Look, certainly you'd want more from Soucy. But checked against the original premise, rolling into the season with Soucy at $3.3 million AAV for one more year as compared to Cody Ceci for $4.5 million for three more seasons after this current one? It's like the best gas station sushi in Alabama. It's not much, but it is something.

And to answer my question, Soucy would get he majority of his time with his former Kraken partner Will Borgen. We'll dive into how they did in the Performance section below.

Once more from the Season Preview:

If Soucy and Borgen can be at least as good as they were together in 2022-23 with the Kraken, you can probably live with that as a second pairing, especially with expectations that Mike Sullivan (a much better coach than Peter Laviolette, or then Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol from when Soucy and Borgen were last paired together) will improve the team defense considerably, if not only by virtue of it being next to impossible to be as bad as they were under Laviolette.

I think we can say that the Rangers team defense did improve this season. Again, tallest skyscraper in Wichita energy there, but it was an improvement over the completely incompetently designed and executed defensive structure under Peter Laviolette.

As for the individual performance for Soucy?

Performance

46 GP | 3 G | 5 A | 8 PTS | -10 | 23 SOG | 23 PIM

Carson Soucy isn't a guy you're acquiring for his counting stats. He's a guy you're acquiring (hopefully) for his underlying defensive metrics. As I noted above, he did end up playing the majority of his defensive minutes with Will Borgen (368:08 TOI together) and secondarily with Braden Schneider (159:35 TOI together).

Neither pairing gave us much to be enthusiastic about.

I do want to note that, as I mentioned above, the Rangers were a better defensive team overall this season as compared to last. Perhaps that's because it would have been hard to get worse than last season. But while they did a reasonably good job of suppressing goals early in the season, it was paired with an excruciating inability to score goals.

In that 368 minutes and change Soucy played with Borgen they posted a 43.79 xGF%, according to Natural Stat Trick. In his time with Schneider they combined for a 41.56 xGF%. I'm going to set aside the Schneider pairing, because Branden Schneider is a whole other can of worms that Chris has the pleasure (or displeasure, depending on how you want to look at it) of opening later.

My hope had been that a Soucy-Borgen pairing would solidify enough to be a serviceable second pairing. I can't say that was the case. I'd predicted they'd skate to about a 50 xGF%. In the end, you're looking for better from your second pair than 43.79 xGF%.

I'll note that while Soucy didn't send a ton of time with Scott Morrow (because Scott Morrow didn't spend a ton of time with the Rangers), they were pretty good together with 51.82 xGF% in 72:27 minutes. In 26:25 with Matthew Robertson, they posted a 69.05 xGF%. Small sample size caveat here, to be sure, but it's enough that it would have been worth it to see either of those pairs have more run to see if it was a small sample size anomaly or if it were something more sustainable.

Grades

Author's Grade: C

Banter Consensus: C

Final Evaluation

In the end, perhaps the greatest service that Carson Soucy performed for Chris Drury was on the public relations front.

After so many stories of Drury's coldness with players—unceremoniously shipping out Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba, and then accommodating Chris Kreider's desire to exit to a preferred destination—Drury opted to ship Soucy to the New York Islanders around the trade deadline. Soucy and his wife had just had their second child, and in only sending him out to Long Island, Drury was doing Soucy a solid by not making the father of a newborn pack up and move cross-country for the first several months of his child's life.

If you want to call that weak sauce, fine. It was a very low-leverage opportunity for Drury to do good by one of his players. Soucy was probably not going to return all that much more than the third round draft pick they got from the Islanders. But when the narrative about Drury is what it is, every little bit helps.

In the end, Soucy's acquisition was mostly a head-scratcher. He wasn't great in Vancouver before coming to the Rangers. He wasn't great with the Rangers. And he wasn't great with the Islanders, either. Probably because Soucy, as a player, just isn't great.

All it ended up costing the rangers was about 10 spots in the third round across two drafts, which will likely make his Rangers tenure pretty forgettable.

Except for you Puckdoku players out there, that is.