New York Rangers Roster Appears to Be Set
NHL teams are just about finished with upgrading their teams this offseason, how did the Rangers do, and is there anything else that they will do going into the 2016-2017 season?
It is the end of July. All the big name free agents–and most of the other NHL caliber free agents–have been signed. A majority of the scheduled arbitration meetings have been taken care of, and there hasn’t been a trade in August in years.
All of this points to the New York Rangers being finished making moves this offseason.
The Rangers, after re-signing restricted free agents Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes 3 days ago, pretty much have their roster set for the 2016-2017 season. The only RFA that the team has yet to sign is forward Marek Hrivik. It is not known if the team wants to bring him back for next year, but I am assuming that if they did, he would have been signing by now.
So as we stand, the New York Rangers are heading into the season with $3,100,000 in cap space according to CapFriendly.com–assuming that Pavel Buchnevich and Brady Skjei are on the NHL roster, Adam Clendening is in the AHL, and Oscar Lindberg is on long-term injury reserve (LTIR)
The lineup, at that rate, would look something like this…
Forwards
Rick Nash – Mika Zibanejad – Mats Zuccarello
Chris Kreider – Derek Stepan – J.T. Miller
Pavel Buchnevich – Kevin Hayes – Michael Grabner
Nathan Gerbe – Josh Jooris – Jesper Fast
Tanner Glass (until Lindberg is back from the LTIR)
Defense
Brady Skjei – Dan Girardi
Goalies
The first thing to take note of is how deep that forward group is. We have talked a great deal about new Ranger Mika Zibanejad over the past week, so you know how I feel about him. I think Mats Zuccarello is going to have another very good year, and I also believe Rick Nash will bounce back and score around 25-30 goals.
I expect the Kreider-Stepan-Miller line to be just as good as it ever has, and possibly even better. I think Stepan will benefit from a full offseason and a full training camp. I also think the World Cup of Hockey will help him get going as well. Chris Kreider and J.T. Miller were both signed to new contracts this offseason, so they will have to prove they were worth those deals. Chris Kreider’s potential resembles that of a ticking time bomb, ready to blast at any moment, getting him to that 30 goal mark for the first time in his career.
The bottom 6 is what really puts this forward group over the top. Last year’s bottom 6 was a much older and slower one that saw Eric Staal-Hayes-Fast together, as well as a fourth line including Tanner Glass-Dominic Moore–Viktor Stalberg. The subtraction of Staal, Moore, and Stalberg, as well as the benching of Tanner Glass (hopefully) and the additions of Jooris, Grabner, Gerbe and the arrival of top prospect Buchnevich, mean a couple things for the New York Rangers going forward.
Firstly, the team got a whole lot quicker. Grabner, for instance, is one of the fastest skaters in the league. While they might not have his level of speed, Gerbe, Buchnevich and Jooris are all very quick on their skates as well. In a division where the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals live, you need that kind of speed to compete.
The other thing it does is bolster the penalty kill. While Dominic Moore was a mainstay on the penalty kill, it seemed as though he had lost a step this past season. Grabner and Gerbe are two of the most efficient penalty killers in the league, and Jooris is no slouch in that department either. A bottom 6 forward group like this should be able to keep the puck on their sticks a lot better than the previous group did as well.
The part of this team that is very scary, and not in a good way, is the defense.
Yikes.
So, the way I figured the defensive pairings was this…
McDonagh and Klein worked well with each other last season. I like Klein a lot, and I think it is ridiculous that fans and bloggers are still standing on their soap boxes trying to get this guy traded when he has had a few very good seasons here on Broadway while at a reasonable cap hit.
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My second pairing is Staal and Holden, and that is horrifying to me. I think Staal will have a bounce back season–and I will have an article on this soon–but I still don’t feel comfortable with him on the 2nd pairing. I envision Holden to be a guy very similar to Kevin Klein. I could be dead wrong about this, but I feel as if they are both probably number 4 or 5 defensemen on a good team. Holden can give you that same random spark of offense that Klein has provided over the years while playing a very solid, hard-working defensive game. He isn’t going to wow you. He isn’t the sexiest name out there and he isn’t a guy that is going to blow you away with his play either, but he does the little things, and at the end of the day, that is fine by me.
The third pairing I have set at Skjei and Girardi. I, personally, would bench Girardi for Dylan McIlrath, but I think after watching Alain Vigneault coach for 3 years now, I know better than to think that possibility is realistic. The reason I put Skjei with Girardi is because we know how slow Girardi is. I think he will have a bounce back too–he can’t be any worse–but he still won’t be anything like his 2010 self. Putting a great skater like Skjei on his pairing will hopefully neutralize that bad skating, and allow the Rangers to have a guy who can dig Girardi out of the holes he creates sometimes due to his lack of footspeed.
I don’t know where the team is going to get the offensive production on the backend that they lost in Keith Yandle. Maybe there is still a reason to think they might try to make a deal, potentially for a guy like Kevin Shattenkirk before the season starts. They do have $3 million in cap space to get something done, but history says that they will have to wait till at least September to see a deal with the Blues go down.
The goalies are set, and I think Henrik Lundqvist is going to have a great year. He has a chip on his shoulder and will get some of his early season kinks out of the way during the World Cup of Hockey. Annti Raanta needs to see more starts this year than he did last year, so hopefully he won’t endure any freak injuries like last time around.
I think Jeff Gorton did a fantastic job this offseason. If the team was able to keep Yandle and potentially trade one of Marc Staal or Dan Girardi, I would have said it was a perfect offseason. The cards Gorton was dealt were not great ones, but he has given the Rangers an insanely deep forward group that should help the team kill penalties a lot more frequently, score a ton more goals, and possess the puck a lot more than in previous years.
Next: The New York Rangers Re-Sign Kreider and Hayes
With all of that said, I believe the Rangers are done making NHL moves this offseason.
And now, we wait until October.