After scrambling across country, Strome settling in with Rangers
NEW YORK >> It was, new teammate Chris Kreider said, the “travel day from hell” for Ryan Strome.
Strome, acquired by the Rangers on Friday afternoon from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for Ryan Spooner in a one-for-one deal, had to scramble to make the crosscontinent trip in time for his team debut against the Florida Panthers on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
“He was here, smiling, excited to be here,” Kreider said. “He worked his ass off.”
That’s certainly one way to put it. The 25-year-old recorded his third highest amount of ice-time all season (16:42) in the Blueshirts’ 4-2 win over Florida, but otherwise didn’t make an impact on the scoresheet as he had to make a quick, but perhaps easier-than-you-may-think adjustment to his new team’s style of play.
“I just talked to the coaches quickly before the game,” Strome said. “At the end of the day, I think a lot of the teams in the NHL now kind of do the same thing. It was just going over the basics, then getting out there and playing hard. It was just nice to get the two points.”
Strome came up in the Islanders organization; they selected him fifth overall in the 2011 NHL Draft, but he was never quite able to live up to that billing over four seasons there before being dealt for Jordan Eberle prior to the start of the 2017-18 season.
A familiarity with the area, however, may help him get acclimated to his third organization in three seasons more quickly.
“I’m sure it will,” he said. “When I came here on the road trip earlier in the year, I said that I didn’t really appreciate New York as much as I could have when I played here, but I now I get the opportunity to live right here in Manhattan. That’s pretty exciting. To play for an Original Six team, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Having been through a trade before can also be beneficial to Strome, as the business side of the game won’t be so much of a shock this time around, albeit this being his first in-season move. There was an interesting quirk with the latter; Strome said that he was told he’d been traded, but wasn’t informed exactly where immediately, leading to some moments of anticipating just where his next stop may be.
“It was only about ten minutes, so I texted my parents,” he said. “My dad was trying to call me, and I was like, ‘Dad, I don’t have any details, so I can’t really tell you anything.’ But yeah, it was a bit of a shock, especially because I was on the way to a road game. You just finish practice and you’re trying to prepare for the game. Then, boom, you’re packing up suitcases a couple hours later. It’s a business, and it was a quick turnaround, but it’s a privilege to be in the NHL and I’m excited to be with a great franchise.”