Keith Yandle didn’t need free agency to find his next home in 2016. By the time the Rangers were ready to move on, he had already made up his mind.
Yandle explained on a recent episode of Wingmen, the podcast hosted by brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, that his decision to leave New York was driven by what he saw happening around the team. He said the Rangers were drifting in the wrong direction and that the Panthers made more sense for him personally and professionally.
“I didn’t want to re-sign in New York, just because I saw the team kind of going down a little bit,” Yandle said. “Guys were leaving.
“I never even got to [unrestricted free agency]. New York offered me [a contract], and I said no.
And then, they asked me where I wanted to sign, and I told them Florida, so they traded my rights to Florida. So, I never even was a UFA.
We got it done before July 1.”
That deal came after a productive run in New York that began when the Rangers paid a steep price to land him at the 2015 trade deadline. On March 1, 2015, the Rangers were 38-17-6 and sitting two points behind the Islanders in the Metropolitan Division when Glen Sather swung a major trade with Arizona.
New York got Yandle, Chris Summer and a fourth-round pick in 2016. Arizona received John Moore, Anthony Duclair, a conditional first-round pick and a second-round pick.
Yandle immediately gave the Rangers the kind of offense they wanted from the blue line. He posted 11 points in the final 21 games of the regular season as New York surged to first place in the division and won the Presidents’ Trophy with 113 points. He then added 11 points in 19 playoff games, though the Rangers fell to the Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final on home ice.
The next season turned out to be the last of his initial contract, and the Rangers’ roster began to change in a hurry. Derick Brassard was traded to Ottawa in the move that brought Mika Zibanejad to New York. Eric Staal and Dominic Moore left in free agency, and Dan Boyle retired.
Yandle’s situation became the most curious of the bunch. Days before free agency, the Rangers traded him to Florida for two draft picks, and he signed a seven-year, $44.5 contract with the Panthers.
On the podcast, Yandle said his thinking was shaped in part by what he was hearing from someone close to him inside the Panthers organization. He also pointed to the fit of living in Florida.
“My best friend, at the time, was working for the Panthers, and that whole year, all he would talk about was this kid [Aleksander] Barkov and this kid [Aron] Ekblad,” Yandle said. “[Jonathan] Huberdeau and [Vincent] Trochek, He was telling about all of these kids coming up.
“Obviously, living in Florida, I knew [that me] being from Boston, my wife’s from Boston, a lot of people visit down there. When I was in Florida, it seemed like every month, someone was in town, so it made a lot of sense logistically.”
Yandle, who was entering his age-30 season, went on to spend the next five seasons with Florida. He totaled 231 points in 371 regular-season games before the Panthers bought out the final two years of the deal on July 15, 2021.
After that, he played 77 games for the Flyers in 2021-22 and finished with a minus-47 plus/minus before retiring.
His career also included the longest Ironman streak in NHL history, 989 consecutive games from March 26, 2009, to March 29, 2022. Since then, Phil Kessel has surpassed that mark with 1,064 consecutive games played, and Brent Burns’ active streak stands at 1,017 straight games.
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