Re-Grading the J.T. Miller Trade Between the Rangers and Canucks

A lot can change in nine months. Or sometimes not.

Rewind to late January, when GM Chris Drury put the finishing touches on a long-discussed trade that brought forward J.T. Miller back to New York from a toxic environment in Vancouver in the hopes of saving a season that had gone sour.

The B/R hockey team broke down the trade and assessed some grades soon after it went public, but now that the Rangers are scheduled to play in Vancouver for the first time since the deal (Tuesday, 10 p.m. ET), we decided to take another shot at it.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.

Initial Grade: B-

J.T. Miller 2025-26 Stats: 2 goals, 4 assists in 10 games

If "meh" weren't already a word, it would have been invented for this moment.

As noted, the deal for Miller was primarily intended to bring the 2011 draftee back to a familiar locker room with hope he'd change the mojo on a season that had gone downhill after a Presidents' Trophy banner hanging in October.

He came east along with Erik Brannstrom, who was subsequently dealt to Buffalo. Jackson Dorrington has played six games this fall with Hartford in the AHL.

But while Miller was a point-per-game player down the stretch in New York, it wasn't enough to get the Rangers into the playoffs. And his two goals and six points in 10 games this year have hardly inspired parade chatter in midtown Manhattan.

The team is 3-5-2 after a 5-1 loss in Calgary that prompted the 32-year-old, who was elevated to team captain in September, to go public with his frustration.

"There's no excuses to come up flat. It sucks," Miller said. "This is not fun right now. We need to correct the starts. I think it's becoming like the trend now, so we need to fix this now on this trip. I mean, it's a hard road trip, so we got to be ready to go to start the game."

Updated Grade: D

Initial Grade: C-

Filip Chytil 2025-26 Stats: 3 goals, 0 assists in 6 games

While the Miller/Rangers side has been clearly disappointing, it's a little harder to find the right terminology to describe the Vancouver side of the deal.

Miller's exit signaled the arrival of Czech-born center Filip Chytil and then-rookie defenseman Victor Mancini, a fifth-round pick of New York in 2022 who is now 23. Also part of the deal was a first-round pick in the 2025 draft, which the Canucks flipped to Pittsburgh a month later in a move that netted Marcus Pettersson and Drew O'Connor.

Chytil had six points in 15 post-trade games with Vancouver last season and opened this year with three goals in six games before a huge, open-ice hit by Tom Wilson knocked him out of a game with Washington last week, and has his long-term future in some doubt given a history that includes multiple concussions.

Mancini, too, is on the shelf as of Sunday night, when he left a game with Edmonton after a hit by Trent Frederic. Coach Adam Foote said afterward there was no definite timeline on when the 6'3", 229-pounder would return to the lineup.

Pettersson and O'Connor have indirectly become the biggest prizes of the deal.

Pettersson is seeing time on the first defensive pair and the top penalty-killing unit when Quinn Hughes missed the game with the Oilers.

O'Connor, meanwhile, is averaging 13:45 of ice time in the bottom six and on the second penalty-kill group, with a particularly strong 58.3 percent success rate in the faceoff dot.

Updated Grade: Incomplete