Rangers trade Rick Nash and end an era

After days of tense waiting, finally the Rick Nash saga is over.

The Rangers traded the admirable veteran to the Bruins on Sunday morning in exchange for a first-round pick in 2018, plus Ryan Lindgren, Ryan Spooner, Matt Beleskey and a seventh-round pick in 2019. Nash, 33, is set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season as his eight-year, $62.4 million deal comes to a conclusion. The Rangers retained half of his prorated $7.8 million salary-cap hit, while the Bruins retained half of Beleskey’s $3.8 million hit while he is in the minors.

Nash submitted his 12-team no-trade list earlier this month, and it was a shock for him then that a trade was becoming an inevitability.

“It’s disappointing, it sucks,” Nash said on Feb. 5 in Dallas soon after he submitted the list. “I love being a Ranger, love being in New York. It’s just the things that happen when your team doesn’t win and they have to make business decisions. It’s really disappointing.”

With the deal, the Rangers now have nine picks in this upcoming draft, including two in each of the first three rounds.

Lindgren is a 20-year-old defenseman playing at the University of Minnesota, having been the Bruins’ second-round pick (No. 49 overall) in 2016.

Spooner is a 26-year-old forward who has put up nine goals and 16 assists while playing 39 games for the Bruins this season and has 253 games of NHL experience over parts of six seasons. He is in his final year of a contract that carries a $2.825 million salary-cap hit and will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. It was unclear if Spooner was going to be available for the Rangers when they took on the Red Wings Sunday night at the Garden, with a pregame ceremony for raising Jean Ratelle’s No. 19 to the rafters.

Beleskey is a 29-year-old veteran who has been a bust for the Bruins since he signed a five-year, $19 million free-agent deal with them in summer 2015, carrying an annual cap hit of $3.8 million through the 2019-20 season. Boston had put him on waivers in mid-December, and since he cleared he had been playing for AHL Providence.

Meanwhile, Nash ends his time on Broadway with an anticlimax, having sat out the past two games as a precaution for what was an inevitable trade for the prime rental winger on the market. He was supposed to be the piece who got the Rangers over the hump when he was obtained in a blockbuster deal with the Blue Jackets in summer 2012. Going to Columbus were Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, Tim Erixon and a first-round pick in 2013. Nash brought with him an annual salary-cap hit of $7.8 million that colored all of the good two-way work he put in.

This was his sixth season on Broadway, and he amassed 145 goals in 375 regular-season games. He also added 14 goals in 73 playoff games for the Blueshirts, which might be the thing that most fans remember — like his one goal in 12 playoff games in his first postseason in 2013, and just three on their 25-game run to the Stanley Cup final in 2014.

This was the biggest and most obvious move GM Jeff Gorton was going to make before Monday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline. But he still has some attractive trade pieces left, including captain Ryan McDonagh and winger Mats Zuccarello, both of whom have one more year left on the deals and might bring a better return at June’s draft.

“I think everyone is on the table,” Gorton told MSG Network on Friday. “When you’re doing what we’re doing, it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. And we’re going to need to bring in a lot of young players and guys that can play in the game today. And we have to look at our best players and our best assets. Unfortunately, that might hit home a little bit with some guys that have been here and had some success.”

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