GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The rebuilding Rangers practiced amid the trade talk swirling around them with Monday’s deadline dead ahead. But a 20-year-old Swede wasn’t worrying about being shipped out. Lias Andersson sat in front of his locker stall Friday and said, “I feel like I belong up here.”
While Kevin Hayes and Mats Zuccarello were drawing interest on the rental market, Andersson was talking about being a piece of the team’s future. The Rangers made him the seventh overall pick in the 2017 draft. They’ve been trying to develop him into a consistent player.
They summoned him Thursday from Hartford for his second stint this season and played him as the fourth-line center in the 4-1 loss to Minnesota at the Garden.