Rangers sign Luke Glendening to a tryout
TLDR: The Rangers are bringing in 37-year-old Luke Glendening on a professional tryout, giving them a faceoff-winning, penalty-killing 4th-line center option while Joe Veleno sits on LTIR.
The news landed Monday morning, and it came quick and clean.
#NYR are signing Luke Glendening to PTO, per source.
The opening is at center on the 4th line. Joe Veleno signed a 1-year, $1.2 million deal this summer to fill that role, then went down with a lower-body injury against Utah on October 4. He was helped to the locker room after the 1st period, never came back, and is now on long-term injured reserve. Not the start anybody wanted for a guy brought in to be the steady bottom-6 piece.
Glendening is the kind of player you call when you want that role filled by someone who has seen everything. He has played 934 NHL games for Detroit, Dallas, Tampa, New Jersey and Philadelphia, and this would be season number 14. Nobody is signing him for the offense. He's here to take the draw, kill the penalty and make the other team's top line work for it.
The 37-year-old gives the #NYR a new 4C option while Joe Veleno is on LTIR. This will be his 14th season in the NHL. He registered 9 points (2G + 7A) with a minus-7 rating in 70 combined games with PHI and NJD last season. 55.6% career faceoff man with PK experience.
His last year was a rough one. He had 4 assists in 52 games with the Devils, got waived, and the Flyers claimed him. In Philly he had 5 points in 18 regular-season games, won 57.2% of his faceoffs, and added a playoff goal. He started this fall on a PTO with the Lightning, signed September 16, and got cut before the regular season. So this is his 2nd tryout in about a month, and this time there's a real opening to play for.
Rangers have signed Luke Glendening to a PTO. He wins faceoffs, skates, forechecks, hits.
That's pretty much the scouting report. Glendening is not a sexy name, but the job doesn't call for one. The Rangers already have the 2nd-best penalty kill in the league at 93.5%, and a 55.6% career faceoff guy who has killed penalties for over a decade only adds to that. New York has about $4.4 million in cap space, so if the PTO turns into a contract, the money won't be what stops it.
What to watch now is whether Mike Sullivan likes what he sees fast enough to turn the tryout into a deal before Veleno gets back. A PTO costs the Rangers nothing. If Glendening is winning draws in practice and looks like he can still skate with NHL 4th-liners, the club gets a cheap veteran center for the stretch. If he doesn't, he's back on the open market, still waiting on that 14th season.