On the Upswing

Équipe: 2019-20 Rangers de New York

Date de création initiale: 20 août 2019

Publié: 21 août 2019

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

As what used to be the case every year before the salary cap era, the New York Rangers landed the top UFA (Panarin) and even went out and got one of the top RFA's (Trouba). Now they will look to build quickly around these two pieces, plus recent top draft choice Kakko to try to sneak into the playoffs in the ultra competitive Metro division as soon as next season. This offseason, they will need to sign their two remaining RFA's, but as neither have arbitration rights they should be able to get them locked up to fair to team friendly deals soon. I think they will bring the young players along slowly and ensure there's a veteran on a line with them when they do play on the big club. The Rangers will probably be sellers at this year's deadline, but they should be well positioned going into next season.

RFA's
Lemieux - signs a 2 x $1M bridge deal to work his way up from the fourth line.
DeAngelo - signs a 1 x $2.25M deal as he has no arbitration rights currently. Next year he can file for arbitration and he still makes nearly four times his QO for this season so I think he'd sign this rather than hold out.

UFA's
Sign a veteran D to a 1 x 700k deal (Schlemko, Morrow) to compete with the young players for playing time / to be the designated #7D.

After Camp
Smith & Beleskey can mentor the young players in the AHL as the NHL game has passed them by. I think Kratsov & Andersson don't quite make the team (Howden & Chytil do). These top picks go to the AHL team to play more minutes and put up good numbers and then are brought up when trades are made to open up room for them closer to Christmas / the trade deadline. Rangers squeeze just under the cap with their final 22 man roster ($12.7k under) rather than trade Namestnikov or Strome for pennies on the dollar in the off season. They can send all waiver exempt guys down on paper on off days to build cap space to limit bonus carry over into next season.

Kreider - Zibanejad - Kakko
Panarin - Chytil - Buchnevich
Namestnikov - Howden - Strome
Lemieux - McKegg - Fast
x- Nieves

Skjei - Trouba
Rykov - DeAngelo
Staal - Fox
x- league min UFA

Lundqvist
Georgiev

As the Season Progresses
As the young players prove themselves down in the AHL, I think New York looks to move Namestnikov near the Xmas break (likely just after the trade freeze comes off) unless they are firmly in the playoff picture.
Again, assuming the Rangers are losing ground in the playoff chase close to the deadline, Fast could be moved to a contender looking for a bottom 6 right handed forward for added depth and perhaps even re-sign with the Rangers as a UFA.
If contract talks are not going well and the Rangers don't feel they can get Kreider extended in the $5.5M - $6.5M AAV range then they will move what will be one of the most sought after pieces at the deadline.

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