Rangers Trade Christian Thomas for Danny Kristo

Yesterday, while I was away, the Rangers pulled off a prospect swap, by sending Christian Thomas to Montreal for Danny Kristo.   Now, I was a big fan of Christian Thomas, but this trade is perfectly in line with what the Rangers have been doing and that's collecting players with international experience and ties to Team USA, Team Sweden, Team Russia and what have you.   Also, by sending Thomas for Kristo, they added more speed   Kristo is a jef and joins guys like Kreider, Hagelin, Fast and Nieves as really great skating Ranger forwards.    Today the Rangers said that they felt Kristo was more versatile than Thomas whom they had come to view a sniper.  He's also bigger, which is nice.

The Rangers can really only have 1 or 2 small players at a time, and with MZA coming back, and St. Croix on the way, that made 3, though St. Croix has grown a bit.   So rather than developing a smurf line, they traded Thomas.

They might even be getting the better of this deal.   Kristo dinged his value by getting suspended from his North Dakota team twice for his involvement in a party where some freshmen players got alcohol poisoning - or what we used to call a learning experience.    Anyway, we were able to get him, and it will no doubt turn out that we wanted him before and were big fans of his from those tournaments, but Gordie hasn't commented yet.