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Trade: Rangers send Lias Andersson to Kings for second-round pick

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Pierre McGuire, Bob McKenzie, Craig Button analyze the biggest storylines going into NHL free agency, including where Henrik Lundqvist and Alex Pietrangelo will end up.

The New York Rangers have officially moved on from Lias Andersson, trading him to the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday afternoon.

In return the Kings received the No. 60 overall pick in the 2020 NHL draft.

They used that pick to select William Cuylle.

The big story here is the fact the Rangers were seemingly unable to salvage their relationship with Andersson, ending a highly disappointing three-year run with the organization.

The Rangers originally selected him with the No. 7 overall pick in 2017 after acquiring that pick (as well as defenseman Tony DeAngelo) from the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for Derek Stepan and Antti Raanta.

Since then Andersson has appeared in just 66 NHL games, scoring three goals and recording six assists.

He had just one assist in 17 games during the 2019-20 season.

Andersson had at one point requested a trade out of New York earlier this season and then did not join the team for training camp during the season restart. The Rangers had loaned him to HV71 of the Swedish Hockey League where had seven goals and five assists in 15 games to close out the 2019-20 season. He already has four points (one goal, three assists) in the first four games of the 2020-21 season.

He is still only 21 years old and still full of talent, so it is a pretty worthwhile gamble for the Kings to take. Perhaps the fresh start in a new environment and in a new organization can get his career back on track.

For the Rangers, it’s a disappointing result for a high draft pick that figured to be a huge part of their rebuild. It just never worked out from the very beginning.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.