Prior to Sunday night’s game against the Ducks, New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault had some interesting thoughts about the McDonagh-Girardi pairing.
Dan Girardi played in his first game since February 26th on Saturday night against the Los Angeles Kings. Unfortunately for the New York Rangers, Girardi played just about as good as he has throughout the last two years.
Girardi played 20:03 in his return while chipping in an assist in the 3-0 shutout win over the Kings, but even with that in mind, Rangers’ head coach Alain Vigneault had an interesting take on Girardi’s play.
“Both and spent a lot of time in their end if you look at their puck possession numbers when they were on the ice, where the other two pairs were as much in the offensive zone as defensive zone, that pair got caught out quite a bit in our own end,” Vigneault mentioned before announcing that he would place Kevin Klein back into the lineup Sunday night.
Are you as shocked as I am by that quote?
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For once, Vigneault is not wrong on the subject of Girardi’s play. Girardi had an astonishingly bad 19.23 CF% in the game, and his partner Ryan McDonagh struggled as well, as he contributed a 26.79 CF%.
Even though Girardi might appear in the lineup again sometime soon after Kevin Klein looked a bit slow on the ice against the Ducks Sunday night, this could be a good hint as to the direction the team may go with their alternate captain in the offseason.
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The Rangers could either buy Girardi out of the remaining three years left on his contract or ask him to waive his no-movement clause to be exposed in the expansion draft and move an asset to the Las Vegas Golden Knights so they take him off their roster.
The latter is probably less likely, so the former is most likely what the Rangers will need to commit on.
The way the buyout would work is that, Girardi would still have a cap hit for the Rangers until the 22-23 season, but it would be at a much less significant number.
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Girardi’s current cap hit is $5.5 million annually, but with a buyout, Girardi’s cap hit would be $2.6 million in 17-18, $3.6 in 18-19 and 19-20, and $1.1 from 20-21 through 20-23. This is an absolute worst case scenario for the Rangers, as they could deal Girardi along with, at least most of his cap hit.