From Lame Duck to Anaheim Duck.

Jacob Trouba is no longer captain of the New York Rangers and is reportedly headed to Anaheim, where he will receive a fullback in Urho Vaakanainen and a fourth-round draft pick, according to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun.

The most important aspect of this trade for the Rangers is that Anaheim takes on everyone $8 million of his cap hit until 2026 without returning a contract to the Rangers. That would have seemed highly unlikely last summer.

Even ignoring return value, New York general manager Chris Drury has freed up a tantalizing amount of cap space to fundamentally change this team’s identity either at the 2025 trade deadline or in the offseason.

However, this is hardly a pure cap dump for the Rangers.

Urho Vaakanainen, 25, has the potential to be the kind of cheap, no-frills depth the Rangers desperately need on the defensive third pairing. The Boston Bruins’ 2017 first-round pick has had his career hampered by injuries, including this season, but he has played steady hockey in an otherwise unstable environment in Anaheim. He’s 6’3″, runs well and has a proven ability to move pucks out of the defensive zone.

The Rangers’ defense has been extremely slow in recent years, and moving from Trouba to Vaakanainen represents a notable improvement in that area in particular. The Finnish left-hander has a cap hit of $1.1 million and will be a starter this summer be a restricted free agent.

If all goes well, he could be a frugal piece of the puzzle in New York beyond this season. A fourth-round pick is also a welcome addition for a team that has traded away the majority of its mid-round picks in recent seasons.

Ultimately, however, this trade is about breaking out of a toxic situation in the short term and laying the foundation for a major defense overhaul that is coming soon.

There are numerous ways the Rangers can build a team with the extra money Trouba frees up, and the vast majority of those scenarios offer more value than what the 30-year-old former captain gave the team over the past two seasons .

The associated risk for Anaheim is relatively low. The Ducks are full of exciting young defensemen. Especially Pavel Mintyukov, Olen Zellweger and Stian Solberg. Vaakanainen is a smaller player and was likely sacrificed at some point to make room for an impactful NHL defenseman one way or another.

A team that has drafted 18 players in the first three rounds of the last three NHL drafts is not going to pass up a fourth-round pick. For a young team still trying to find its wings, it makes sense that GM Pat Verbeek would want to add some veteran presence to his backend.

Given the circumstances, you can understand why they pounced on Trouba. They failed to cause much of a stir in the summer. Now a big name is available in unusual circumstances in December and is willing to waive his no-trade clause to join them.

And even if Trouba goes completely broke, what is the real damage that will be done? They still have more cap space than they can use. The contract expires next season and they can probably replace him before then if necessary.

Maybe Trouba needs a mental reset. Compared to the high stakes of New York trying to win a Cup, it will be in the calmer waters of Anaheim, where not every defeat will be critically analyzed.

There was a time when Trouba was a 50-point defenseman in the NHL. That’s unlikely now, but perhaps Anaheim will move him into a protected offensive role and he can become a top four defender again.

However, assuming this move will finally get the Ducks out of quicksand and back forward for the first time since they tore it all down a few seasons ago, it’s hard to imagine how it will work. There’s a reason the Rangers traded their own captain, and while the media hype played a big part, it was primarily about his rapid decline in performance on the ice.

The Ducks are most likely overpaying for a player who is well past his prime. In that respect, he’s not that different from some of the others on his new team.