2026 Rangers Season Previews: Scott Morrow

Scott Morrow is my child, and I will not say a bad thing about him. Well, sort of.

I think Chris Drury got a valuable prospect back in the K'Andre Miller trade in terms of offensive upside. But like too many prospect trades, they acquired a player the organization didn't know what to do with.

The end result is a 23-year-old, highly (offensively) skilled defenseman who the New York Rangers may need to expose to waivers in September and lose for nothing, just a year removed from the trade that acquired him.

Not awesome.

Previous Performance

Morrow was one of the later cuts in preseason last year, losing his roster spot to a conglomerate of third-pairing defenseman with varying degrees of merit to receiving NHL ice time.

He finished the year with time split between the very bad New York Rangers and somehow even worse Hartford Wolf Pack. And, on top of all of that, his time with the Rangers was potentially a worse case of role and usage than what he got from a head coach in Hartford who was universally vilified. Cool stuff.

In 29 NHL games, Morrow had six assists. He averaged 15:40 of ice time in those games, with 1:26 coming on the power play—usually after the first unit spent the majority of it on the ice doing nothing. When Adam Fox was injured, Morrow sat on the bench while Vladislav Gavrikov ran the power play. You will never convince me that was not the most stupid thing Mike Sullivan did all last year—at least until he took Gabe Perreault off the top power play for J.T. Miller.

In Hartford, he played 34 games where he posted a 5-14-19 line for, again, a horrendous Wolf Pack team.

Expectations

I sort of don't know.

I genuinely do not think Morrow plays for the Rangers next year, mainly because the defensive units all seem to be set.

Gavrikov-Fox
Pettersson-Durzi
Schneider-Robertson/Iorio/Vaakanainen/Morrow (probably in that order based on what I have seen from Sullivan)

That says nothing of Alberts Smits, who I think has a real shot to make the team out of camp, or Drew Fortescue, who will likely spend the year in the AHL, but showed the ability to hang at the NHL level last year.

Morrow fitting in there would require him to beat out at least a few other players for the job. For a guy who had a clear-cut chance to make that impact last year and did not get it, I just don't think Sullivan jives with what Morrow brings to the table.

Prediction

NHL (if he stays up out of camp): 25 GP | 2G | 7A | 9 PTS
AHL: 80 GP | 17G | 30A | 47 PTS

If he does stay with the Rangers, I would expect him to spend a lot of time in the AHL or in the press box for the Rangers as their seventh defenseman and a healthy scratch. If he plays in the AHL, I see him down there the entire year. If he sits in the press box, he will play about 15-25 games for the Rangers this year, maybe.

If he is to go to Hartford he needs to pass through waivers. I know we joke a lot about guys who are placed on waivers who should obviously be picked up and then they aren't. But I can't imagine Morrow doesn't get hard looks from teams out of camp. He's young enough, has shown enough offensive skill, and the Rangers are bad and other teams might think they can fix him.

Either way, I'm not sure Morrow has a long future here in New York (I hope this is on the next "Joe Was Wrong" column next year).

Conclusion

Morrow is a good, valuable young player who has incredible offensive skills and potentially severe defensive deficiencies. It was enough of an issue to get a head coach who seems to just wave his hand and get guys to become quality NHL defenseman to not want to give him a shot.

I don't think anything has changed between then and now, other than the addition of Smits, who doesn't help Morrow's chances.

Like I said, I hope I'm wrong here, but I don't think I am.