underpay by alot. id give him 4.3M for 2 years

Lmao what's old is new again. 2019-20 is the year of the enforcer. Scott Sabourin in Ottawa, Zac Rinaldo in Calgary and now Michael Haley in New York.

To be fair, I don't think Haley sees more than 15 NHL games this year. The rangers have put an emphasis on bolstering their AHL team and Boo Nieves is more valuable doing that in Hartford than sitting in the press box.

The more significant news is Chytil and Kravtsov being sent doen

I think he plays at least 70 games. No one touches Panarin or Kakko all season

Team toughness is a much better deterrent. And even more to the point, Haley shouldn't be thought of as an enforcer, hes a grit player who is willing to fight... at best. he isn't scaring anyone into not taking a run at Panarin or Kakko.

Take the last pre-season game for example..
The entire third period, the Islanders took run after run at Ranger players... on one shift, their fourth line took turns with cheap shots on Lemieux. Their reward for taking liberties? Their 3rd best fighter got the pleasure of kicking Haley's @$$.

The guy has heart, but if your going to employ the flawed enforcer theory...at least make it a legit enforcer. Glass was better than this!

For their part, the Rangers showed some spark and and didn't back down, but the reality is their a bunch of shrimps who aren't very good at taking the body and are even worse at fighting when necessary. I would anticipate the organization moving fast to bring on a better fighter if and when one becomes available..or overpaying for one if their young blue chippers start getting bounced around.

Not a chance he plays 70 games. Lemieux is already in the "enforcer" role. As soon as Chytil or Kravtsov are ready, he's the first guy to get waived.

In 17-18 Haley lead the NHL in fights with 22 (9 more than Tom Wilson). He fought 3 times just this preseason. He might be the last player in the NHL who's sole role (Brendan Lemieux has other elements to his game) is to fight and to fight often. I'm not suggesting he's the best at it but he has a clear role and he is willing to do it more than anyone else and the entire league knows it. If he's on the roster he's in the lineup because of that trait.

Not sure that's necessarily true, but just my opinion...and I'll explain why I feel this way...

An enforcer who leads the league in fights sounds like an oxymoron, because a good enforcer uses his simple presence to deter other teams from getting out of line. It's the fear factor that the enforcer concept is based on. But if actually you're fighting, then something has already happened leading to the fight. This kind of defeats the purpose of the Rangers having Haley around since your original comment was "no one touches Panarin or Kakko all season".

The fact that he led the league in fights two seasons ago doesn't really say anything about him being good at his role, and more likely says that other players aren't really afraid of fighting him. The league might know that he is willing to fight, but they evidently don't care, hence..no fear factor. I'd be much more interested in knowing how he fared in those 22 fights, and who he fought against.

I again point to the last pre-season game with the Islanders. You could clearly tell the Islanders knew they had a big upper hand in the physical department, which has been an issue with the Rangers for years now. It showed in the third period when the Islanders decided they had enough with being out-skated for two periods and started running everyone in sight. Interestingly enough, the game turned in the Islanders favor because the Rangers could not respond in kind, and they eventually lost the game. They tried their guts out as a team, and I give them a lot of credit for that since this is truly the eventual solution to the problem. But Hayley was not nearly the imperfect answer to the problem that you would like, highlighted by him losing his fight handily to the Islanders' 3rd string tough guy. It only emboldened the Islanders and tilted the momentum of the game further in their favor. In the end he actually sparked the opposition, and didn't come close to serving as a deterrent.

Again, I am not knocking the guy himself, he has my respect for sure...but this is a no-frills brand band-aid approach by the Rangers at best.

Team toughness is what makes teams respect each other. Two fighters can have a fight...it's the other players who are left on the ice after the misconducts are given out...the guys who don't fight.. that get hesitant when things get rough. The prospect of pissing a tough team off..and then shift after shift getting physically pounded by that team's players top to bottom, isn't very appealing to the "fines" guy...that type of fear is the real deterrent.