New York Rangers Made Good Choices on a Crazy July 1st

The New York Rangers took July 1st to make smart, cost-effective signings to bolster their bottom 6 and their AHL team’s defense.

July 1st, 2016 will go down as one of the craziest days of player movement in NHL history. There were over 100 players signed to new contracts in a 12-hour span. A lot of them were solid signings, but there were also a lot of “what the heck was that GM thinking” contracts with stupid amounts of money thrown out there. Luckily, the New York Rangers weren’t involved in the “silly season” part of the day.

After signing Adam Clendening and Michael Grabner, the New York Rangers were not finished. The Rangers signed bottom 6 forward Nathan Gerbe to a 1-year contract worth a total of $600,000.
The Rangers also inked defenseman Michael Paliotta to a 1-year deal worth $575,000.

With those 4 signings, the Rangers accomplished a couple of very important things.

Firstly, the Rangers got a whole lot deeper. With a lot of players coming off the books both at the NHL and AHL level, the Rangers have begun to restock the shelves a bit. Not only do these players provide good depth, but they also provide cheap depth, which is super important for a New York Rangers team in a cap crunch.

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Grabner and Gerbe will provide excellent depth in a revamped bottom six. Both of the forwards in their late 20’s will provide a considerable amount of speed–especially Grabner, who will bring a lot of the same attributes that Carl Hagelin did–and a couple fantastic penalty killers.

According to this tweet by @HockeyStatMinor, Grabner and Gerbe are actually premier penalty killers.

The New York Rangers penalty kill dropped to 26th in the NHL last season after being in the top 6 for the previous 2 years of Alain Vigneault‘s tenure here. Now with a combination of those two and Jeff Beukeboom‘s potentially new penalty kill system.

The defensive additions of Clendening and Paliotta will most likely not be impactful at the NHL level this year. Both of them are 23 years old and were taken in the 2011 draft by the Chicago Blackhawks–Clendening in the 2nd round and Paliotta in the 3rd round. The 6’4″ Paliotta has only played in 2 NHL games–one with Chicago, one with Columbus. Clendening has a bit more NHL experience playing in 50 games in his career including 29 games last season. Both defensemen are young enough to still develop into NHL caliber players.

With those two signings, the Hartford Wolf Pack now have 6 defensemen on their roster in Clendening, Paliotta, Chris Summers, Matt Bodie, Tommy Hughes and Ryan Graves. Clendening could probably be slotted as the Rangers 9th defenseman going into the season behind the top 7 who will start with the big club in October and Summers.

So after day one of free agency, it is a bit of a relief that the Rangers didn’t go out and throw stupid money at a forward like Milan Lucic or Kyle Okposo like a lot of fans were worried about. The Rangers shouldn’t be anywhere close to finished with the offseason remodel, though. Trades still need to be made and RFAs still need to be signed.

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I do think the Rangers are a better team than they were a few days ago, but they will not be a cup contender until the defense is overhauled.