Scott Morrow’s path with the Rangers already looks precarious, and it’s hard to ignore how quickly a player acquired for upside can end up on the edge of the roster.
The Rangers got Morrow back in the K'Andre Miller trade, and the appeal was obvious: offensive skill from the blue line. The problem, as it’s been framed here, is that New York may still not know exactly what to do with him. That has left the 23-year-old defenseman in a spot where the Rangers could need to expose him to waivers in September and potentially lose him for nothing only a year after bringing him in.
Last season didn’t help his case. Morrow was one of the final cuts in camp and lost out to a group of third-pairing defensemen with different levels of usefulness. He spent the year bouncing between a rough Rangers club and an even rougher Hartford Wolf Pack team, and his usage in both places didn’t exactly scream confidence.
With the Rangers, he appeared in 29 NHL games and finished with six assists while averaging 15:40 of ice time. He saw 1:26 per game on the power play, usually after the first unit had already spent most of the man advantage on the ice and accomplished very little.
When Adam Fox was injured, Morrow stayed on the bench while Vladislav Gavrikov handled the power play. The view here is that was 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, Morrow played 34 games and put up a 5-14-19 line for a Wolf Pack team described as horrendous.
Looking ahead, the expectation is murky, but the sense is that Morrow may not play for the Rangers next year at all. The defensive group appears to be set, with Gavrikov-Fox, Pettersson-Durzi, and Schneider-Robertson/Iorio/Vaakanainen/Morrow listed in that order based on what has been seen from Sullivan. That doesn’t even account for Alberts Smits, who is seen as having a real shot to make the team out of camp, or Drew Fortescue, who likely heads to the AHL after showing he could hang at the NHL level last year.
For Morrow to crack the group, he would have to beat out multiple players, and the belief here is that Sullivan doesn’t really mesh with what Morrow offers. That matters because he had a clear chance to make an impact last year and never seized it.
If he remains up with the Rangers, the projection is 25 games, two goals, seven assists, and nine points at the NHL level, with a lot of time either in the AHL or sitting as the seventh defenseman. If he goes to Hartford, the expectation is a full season there, with an AHL projection of 80 games, 17 goals, 30 assists, and 47 points.
There’s also the waiver issue. If the Rangers try to send him to Hartford, he has to clear, and the feeling here is that teams around the league will take a hard look. He’s young, he has real offensive talent, and other clubs may believe they can sort out the rest.
The bottom line is simple: Morrow has value and upside, but the defensive concerns are real, and they may be enough to keep him from carving out a lasting role in New York. The addition of Smits only makes the road tougher. The hope is that this gets revisited in next year’s “Joe Was Wrong” column.
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What makes the situation especially interesting is how naturally those three profiles fit together on paper. Zibanejad still brings the finishing ability and leadership the Rangers have leaned on, Lafrenire is trending toward a bigger offensive impact, and Perreault adds the creative element that could unlock more chances for everyone. The projections suggest a line with real upside, but they also leave open the bigger question of how the Rangers choose to balance their most established forward with two players pushing for larger roles. [Read more 🡒]