Staal is not going to retire and forgo $4.2 million. NYR will probably wait until the year after next season to sign UFA's when Staal, Lundqvist, Smith, and the Shattenkirk buyout come off the books. As well as the young players have to play this year and next year to see who's good and who's not and what holes have to be filled with said UFA's. The only reason Gorton signed Panarin is because The Bread Man has been saying for a few years prior that he wants to play in New York and he took a little less bread $$$ than other teams were offering. I'm sure JD being Prez helped as well. Hall doesn't care at this point where he plays, he just wants the most money he could get and as many teams to swoon over him this offseason to try and woo him to play for their team.

12M per year likely will be the number for Hall...but don't think the Rangers will look to add that type of salary/cap hit to their salary structure for a player for whom the contract runs through his 29-35 years....this very point was brought up before signing Panarin- the justification with Panarin was that since he came from Russia so late (i believe 23) he had a lot of "tread left on the tires"...same can't be said for Hall.

I'm sure we will see possibly several teams offering monster contracts to Hall...but going forward the most successful NHL teams will probably be the teams giving the big money AND term to players coming off ELCs- so the contract ends in the player's late 20s or early 30s.

ty ronning never makes a nhl team. i doubt his ability to become a good ahl player, forget about the nhl.