GET OUT OF TOWN
Rangers ship Del Zotto to Nashville for gritty defenseman Klein Pat Leonard,
MICHAEL Del Zotto went left, the Rangers went right, and an almost six-year relationship ended Wednesday afternoon when GM Glen Sather dealt the lefthanded former 2008 first-round pick to the Nashville Predators for hard-nosed righthanded defenseman Kevin Klein to balance Alain Vigneault’s blue line.
“I take defense seriously,” Klein, 29, a married father of two young boys, told the Daily News in a phone call from his home in Nashville. “I like playing in my own end. It’s something I take pride in. (The trade) is a little surprising, but it’s exciting at the same time, and I already know some of the guys with the Rangers.”
Klein (6-1, 199 pounds), who played half of the 2003-04 junior season with Ryan Callahan and Dan Girardi on the OHL’s Guelph Storm, averaged 18:48 of ice time per game for Nashville this season. He will make his Rangers debut Thursday night at the Garden against the St. Louis Blues.
Vigneault said after practice in Greenburgh that the main motivation for the trade was to stock his lineup with three defensemen who feel most comfortable on each side. Now he has that: Ryan McDonagh, Marc Staal and John Moore all are more comfortable on the left, while Girardi, Anton Stralman and Klein prefer the right.
Vigneault said he anticipates “some good internal competition” between Klein and Anton Stralman for the righthanded top-four defenseman’s role.
“We needed to have another righthanded shot on the team,” Sather said on a conference call. “Ever since we lost (Michael) Sauer (to a career-ending concussion in December of 2012), we’ve been short a righthanded shot player. We tried to make do the best we could.”
That the 23-year-old Del Zotto was set to be a restricted free agent this summer seeking a raise from his $2.5 million deal also was a factor. Klein’s cap hit is a certainty, as he is locked in to $2.9 million a year through the 2017-18 season. “To have a player of his caliber under contract until he’s 34 makes sense to us,” Sather said, “especially with the way the market’s going. It made a lot of sense from the hockey point of view and the financial point of view.”
Also, since Girardi is one of several important players who would become unrestricted free agents this summer, Klein’s acquisition further could be viewed as insurance.
“We want to resign all of these players, and we’d like to get it done before the end of the season if we can,” Sather said of a group that includes Callahan, Stralman and Brian Boyle. “We’ve had discussions with their agents, and hopefully we will get it done, but that hopefully gives us more insurance on that side. You have to look to the future as well when you make these kind of deals.”
Del Zotto, who found out about the trade just after Wednesday’s practice in Greenburgh, said some quick goodbyes to teammates but was unavailable to the media as he rushed out to join the Predators for their game Thursday night in Vancouver.
Del Zotto, who was first-team all-rookie in 2009-10 when he posted nine goals and 37 points through 80 games, spent parts of five seasons with the Rangers. He was a major part of the Blueshirts’ run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2011-12 and was part of the Rangers’ current run back toward the top of the Metropolitan Division.