Rangers, Ducks agree to Chris Kreider trade — it’s now all in his hands

The move to Anaheim is now entirely up to Chris Kreider after the Rangers have struck a preliminary agreement with the Ducks to trade their senior player. 

The Post has learned that while Anaheim was on his 15-team no-trade list submitted last July 1, Chris Drury was given permission by the winger’s party to conduct negotiations with general manager counterpart Pat Verbeek after weeks of constant communication between the hierarchy and Kreider’s camp. 

But, after conducting due diligence throughout the day after learning of the preliminary agreement late Tuesday night, Kreider still had not signed off on it even as we have been told that one of the individuals in Anaheim with whom he spoke in the morning believed it was a fait accompli. 

Kreider, who turned 34 at the end of April, has a family. He has earned as much time as he needs to make this career- and life-changing decision. But it’s unclear why he would have agreed unofficially to remove Anaheim from his no-trade list if he were not amenable to joining a Ducks team that includes former teammates Jacob Trouba, Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano. 

Chris Kreider

Perhaps it is just dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” before the Boxford, Mass., native moves his brood across the country. 

When — is it if? — he does agree to the deal in which the Blueshirts would receive 20-year-old prospect Casey Terrance, a center out of OHL Erie drafted No. 59 overall by the Ducks in 2023, the divorce after 13 years that has seemed inevitable for months will be done. 

The Core will be no more. 

Kreider, who joined the Blueshirts for the 2012 playoffs and is the club’s most senior player, has two years remaining on his contract at an annual cap hit of $6.5 million per. The Ducks have agreed to pick up the full freight. 

The separation between the club and its third all-time leading goal scorer (326) has been forecast for months following a public breach last November, when contents of a league-wide memo circulated by Drury in which the GM cited Kreider by name — as well as Trouba — as being available on the market were leaked. 

Plus, there was the healthy scratch in New Jersey on Dec. 23 in which the team went above and beyond to announce this was not injury-related. 

Now it appears that Kreider will be joining the former Rangers captain in Orange County. 

Kreider is coming off the worst full season of his career in which he was plagued by multiple injuries. The winger recorded 22 goals and only eight assists in 68 games while scoring only one power-play goal after the calendar flipped to 2025. 

Chris Drury

The Boston College product trails only icons Rod Gilbert (406) and Jean Ratelle (336) on the franchise goal scoring leaderboard and is 10th in points (582). 

He is the all-time leader in Rangers playoff goals (48) and points (76), the goal total of course including No. 20’s 2024, Game 6 third-period hat trick in Carolina that propelled the Blueshirts to the conference finals against Florida. The Rangers went to the conference finals five times in his career, once to the Stanley Cup Final in 2014. 

If Kreider is indeed moved, his closest friend, Mika Zibanejad, might be more amenable to waiving his full no-move clause if asked. The two men have grown inseparable over the past number of years. 

The Blueshirts entered last season with the core that had been in place from 2019-20 that featured Kreider, Zibanejad, Trouba, Igor Shesterkin, Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, Filip Chytil, Ryan Lindgren and Kaapo Kakko with K’Andre Miller and Alexis Lafrenière joining the band the following season. 

When Kreider goes — joining Trouba, Chytil, Lindgren and Kakko, up to now — The Core will be no more. 

If Kreider goes, at this point.