Hours before they played the Bruins at the Garden on Wednesday, the Rangers announced they had traded rugged forward Cody McLeod to the Nashville Predators for a seventh-round pick in the 2020 NHL draft. Later, to take McLeod’s spot on the roster, the Rangers called up Vinni Lettieri – on his 24th birthday – from their Hartford Wolf Pack farm team.
McLeod, 34, returns to Nashville a little more than a year after the Rangers claimed the enforcer off waivers from the Predators in January 2017. He played a total of 56 games for the Rangers over a 12-and-a-half-month span, scoring one goal, collecting two assists, with 99 penalty minutes.