Not even two days since writing 2000-plus words, catching up on all the news and storylines from the Kitchener Rangers since coming back from the holiday break less than a week ago, we have another bombshell that makes things quite interesting ahead of the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) trade deadline coming on Jan. 9.
Related: Kitchener Rangers News & Notes: Debuts, Injuries, Trade Deadline & More
On Friday morning, the Rangers announced that former captain Matthew Andonovski would be returning from the American Hockey League (AHL).
Matthew Andonovski Returns
The 20-year-old, Ottawa Senators fifth-round draft pick from 2023, has been with the Belleville Senators all season, since making a great impression at training camp. He has played only three AHL games, battling injuries throughout the season.
His last game was played on Nov. 1. After missing a couple of months, it makes sense for the Senators to let Andonovski return to the Rangers for his overage year to fully recover from whatever had been holding him out and get some consistent ice time throughout the back half of the season.
This will be Andonovski’s fifth season with the Rangers. He played 43 games for the team in his rookie season back in 2021-22 and had played 65-plus in every season since.
Last season, while captaining the Rangers, he scored six goals and 15 assists for 21 points. He brings a physical edge and an intensity that the Rangers have lacked at times this season. After 240 games with the East Avenue Blue, there won’t be anyone upset to see Andonovski back in a Ranger uniform.
The Rangers’ Overage Dilemma
For most of the season, the Rangers had been keeping an overage spot open, presumably, in case of this exact situation. However, their recent trade with the Erie Otters for overage forward Dylan Edwards puts the Rangers in an interesting position.
With Andonovski returning, the Rangers now have four overage players on their roster. The two mentioned, along with Jakub Chromiak and Jack Pridham. The problem is that you can only use three.
With Pridham and Edwards both on fire and competing with each other for the league’s lead in scoring by an overage player, you’re not taking either of them out of your lineup. That leaves Chromiak as the odd man out, which feels wrong given that he’s been a significant part of the team this season, with 23 points, playing on their top two pairs and on the power play.
Something will have to give before the Jan. 9 trade deadline. It’s hard to say what the Rangers will do next, as Josh Brown of the Waterloo Region Record reported the general manager, Mike McKenzie, “doesn’t see any immediate needs for his club, he has several wants, though he’s keeping them secret ahead of the league’s trade deadline” (from ‘The future is now for the Kitchener Rangers,’ Waterloo Region Record, 12/30/25).
Regardless, the Andonovski addition feels like a luxury for the Rangers, and any move they will make afterwards will feel the same. With Edwards and Chiarot’s addition, it feels like the Rangers have two lethal top-six lines, and it has been awesome to see Cameron Arquette and Haeden Ellis reunited on the Rangers’ third line as we’ve seen them have excellent chemistry throughout the season.
Even before Andonovski’s return, I would argue the Rangers had one of the best blue lines in the OHL. With him, they have a logjam of talent on the backend. On top of that, the goaltending, which was their most significant question mark coming into the season, has been solid as well.
While GM McKenzie has tough decisions to make, these are probably the type of decisions these guys would rather make with their team having too much talent rather than too little.
It will be interesting to see what the Rangers’ lineup looks like Friday night when they hit the ice at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium against the Barrie Colts, who are missing key players to the World Junior Championship.
