If he is willing to drive the net, he will get every opportunity in our top-6. Also, if he is defensively responsible like you said, he could be a good fit with McCann and Beniers.
Defensively he's probably the best forward on the Rangers. He just doesn't get PK time (or PP time for that matter) and has just not been developed for shit. For the record (my numbers may be slightly off here) at 5v5 he's one of the top forwards for preventing goals while on the ice.
His On Ice SV% (percentage of saves made while he's on the ice) is 30th among forwards in the NHL at 5v5 with 150m min TOI. About 95%.
19 GF 5v5 10 GA 5v5.
To give some context to these stats, On Ice SH% is the opposite, how many goals your team scores with you on the ice. There's very few players who has both a similar OISH% and OISV% (very high) - John Tavares, Adrian Kempe Bo Horvat, Dylan Guenther, Anders Lee, Matt Boldy, Cole Perfetti, Adam Lowry.
So basically, there's very few other players who's team both scores at a high rate and defends at a high rate while they're on the ice.
Now when you look at the quality of players those other players play with, the difference in TOI, etc...
He's a good player. The points just haven't come.
When you compare him to other players on the Rangers, well, he's 5th in GF at 5v5 but 3rd in GA.
4-6 less goals than Lafreniere, Panarin, Trochek, and Cuyle but between 4-20 less goals against than all of those. Only Cuyle is close, the rest are all 10+ goals against more.