The Rangers are down to the wire on their preseason roster decisions, and the cleanest answer is sitting right in front of Chris Drury: waive Joonas Korpisalo.
New York plays its final preseason game this evening, and once that’s done, the front office has to lock in the opening night group. There are a few ways Drury could go, but the move that best serves the post-Letter 2.0 retool is also the one that feels least likely to happen.
Waiving Korpisalo would clear up the logjam immediately and give the Rangers the most freedom to sort through their younger pieces. It would also solve the awkward three-goalie situation in one shot, handing Dylan Garand the backup job and opening a 23-man roster spot for another young defenseman.
That matters because New York has a few intriguing names it should want to keep in the mix. Garand has done enough to win the backup role on merit, and his cap hit under $1 million only adds to the appeal.
He was re-signed before the Korpisalo trade, which makes the timing of all this a little strange, though maybe that’s a question that never gets answered. Scott Morrow, meanwhile, came back from Carolina in the K'Andre Miller sign-and-trade and still looks like a 23-year-old with room to grow into a real NHL role on the blue line.
Matthew Robertson deserves mention, too. He held up last season as the No. 6 defender, and with Alberts Smits in the picture, he looks like at worst a No. 7 option who can rotate in from press row.
The problem is that there just isn’t a comfortable way to keep all three skaters and three goaltenders on the roster at once. If Drury insists on keeping Korpisalo, then Morrow becomes the most obvious odd man out, though there is a narrow path where he stays if Smits begins the year in Hartford or if a late Braden Schneider trade changes the picture. Schneider is 25 and on a one-year, $5.5 million deal, so his ceiling is not exactly a mystery.
Morrow’s NHL sample wasn’t pretty on the surface - his 42.51 GF% was rough - but the deeper numbers tell a more useful story. Per Evolving-Hockey, he posted a 49.11 CF% and a 48.84 xGF%, which ranked fourth and fifth among Rangers blueliners.
Those marks were better than Schneider’s 45.45 CF% and 44.61 xGF%. For a younger, much cheaper player, that’s the kind of profile a front office should want to keep evaluating instead of exposing him to waivers.
And that’s why this keeps circling back to Korpisalo.
He does bring more than 300 NHL games of experience, but the recent results don’t justify squeezing out a real future asset to keep him around. He counts $3 million against the cap, and over the last three seasons he has put up save percentages of .894, .893, and .890, along with goals-against averages of 3.15, 2.90, and 3.27.
The Rangers have already seen how a veteran backup can fit behind Igor Shesterkin. Jonathan Quick arrived with skepticism a few years ago, but he brought championship pedigree and eventually moved seamlessly into the front office after retiring.
Korpisalo does not offer that same profile. Garand has put in his time in Hartford, outplayed him in camp, and shown more reliability than previous depth options like Spencer Martin.
If New York truly wants to protect its future while sorting out the roster, the answer is simple. Waive Korpisalo, keep the young talent, and avoid wasting a spot on an overpaid veteran with a sub-.900 recent track record. Anything else would be an unnecessary misstep in what has otherwise been a productive summer.
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