Jacob Trouba is happy with his new home in Anaheim, but he is not pleased with how the New York Rangers handled his departure from Manhattan.
“I was put in a position this summer to make a decision between my career and my family and I chose my family. I would choose my family 100 times over again,” Trouba told Mollie Walker of the New York Post.
“I don’t feel bad about that. I was happy about it. I don’t like that it was made public necessarily or how everything unfolded so publicly, but I guess that’s part of New York and what happens.”
“It made it difficult to play kind of with that hanging over everything. The result is the result. I’m happy with moving forward, but I’m not overly thrilled with how it went down. In my opinion, things could’ve been handled better. I’m not blaming anybody or anything, just kind of how it happened I thought was kind of unfortunate.”
The trade talks for Trouba began in the offseason and were brought up again recently when Rangers general manager Chris Drury told other GMs about the defenseman’s availability.
Trouba also confirmed to Walker on Friday that if he had not agreed to the trade — Trouba’s contract includes a 15-team no-trade clause, according to PuckPedia — the Rangers were planning to place the veteran defenseman on waivers, meaning he wouldn’t have had any control over where he would go.
In the end, Trouba was not placed on waivers Friday but was traded to the Ducks shortly after. In exchange, the Rangers received defenseman Urho Vaakanainen and a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.
So far this season, Trouba played 24 games with the Rangers and earned six points. The 30-year-old from Rochester, Michigan, spent parts of six seasons in New York, playing in 364 regular-season games and recording 31 goals and 105 assists for 136 points.
Trouba was named captain of the Rangers before the 2022-23 season and helped the team win its fourth Presidents’ Trophy last season after finishing the year with 114 points.
