New York Rangers: Ranking the importance of the upcoming restricted free agents

The New York Rangers have rendered themselves to the mercy of the draft lottery.  It is paramount they extend key restricted free agents this off-season as a rebuilding team.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Last year the Rangers were a bounce or two away from the Eastern Conference Finals. This year, they’d be lucky to be competing in a beer league final. The poor roster construction finally caught up with the team and it burned them badly. The trading away of veteran assets for younger and cheaper players was the right decision for the long term.

The Rangers as a whole are a fairly young team. Of the players expected to make next year’s team, only six will be over the age of 26 at the start of the season. All six of these players: Mats Zuccarello, Henrik Lundqvist, Chris Kreider, Kevin Shattenkirk, Marc Staal and Ryan Spooner are key contributors that will be a big factor in the team’s overall success.

With the way the league’s salary and contract system work, it is absolutely crucial to find a common ground with restricted free agents. The trick to signing these players that are under team control is determining who needs an extension and who is deserving of a bridge deal.

A bridge deal is a contract that is essentially a short-term prove it deal at the end of team control. A player that gets a bridge deal is a player that a team is still undecided on. The player is too good to just be allowed to walk away but isn’t worth the long-term financial commitment of a true extension. This summer the Rangers have five key players about to enter restricted free agency.

One of the Ranger’s several college free agent signings, Jimmy Vesey is a difficult situation.

Of the several pending restricted free agents the Rangers have, Vesey is the most up in the air. The Harvard alumnus does not do anything great but is not a bad hockey player by any stretch of the imagination. This is where the difficulty in a contract negotiation will come in for the Rangers.

Coming to an agreement with a restricted free agent is like choreographing a dance. It takes two to make everything work and the Rangers still cannot be sure about what they have in Vesey. Through two NHL seasons, he has produced at the rate of a low-end third line wing.

When the forward was signed as a free agent out of college, he came with a marquee pedigree. Vesey won the Hobey Baker award as college hockey’s most outstanding player as a junior in college for his goal-scoring prowess. At the NHL level, he has not been able to find a consistent scoring touch and it has capped his production at around 30 points.

Of the five important restricted free agents the Rangers have, Vesey is the most likely to end up with a bridge deal. Players of Vesey’s caliber are easily available in free agency every summer, so a large financial commitment would not make sense. Whatever the Rangers decide to do with Vesey will not be the most important choice this summer

Of the Rangers restricted free agents, none has as much of a potential swing as Ryan Spooner.

Being called a “throw in,” as part of a trade for one of the NHL’s best players can never be good for a player’s ego. However, in the case of Spooner, it only seems to have invigorated the forward. Since getting traded to the Rangers, the center/wing tweener has ten points in six games.

Figuring out what to do with Spooner is going to be a true conundrum for the Rangers front office. With his previous team, the Boston Bruins, he was a bottom six forward. Spooner has primarily played in the middle six with the Rangers Kevin Hayes and Jesper Fast.

Finding a consistent spot for the forward is not the issue, the problem will be term and salary. At 26 years old, this will be the last contract that Spooner signs before reaching unrestricted free agency. This means that if the Rangers want him for a multiyear commitment, they will be buying a year of his unrestricted free agency.

With the way the league’s collective bargaining agreement works, players get paid more as unrestricted free agents because they can command more offers from a variety of teams. Finding a fair price for Spooner will not be easy, especially if the Rangers want to signs him to a contract that is longer than a bridge deal. In terms of the team’s long-term health, Spooner is an intriguing player but not irreplaceable.

The newest Ranger has an interesting career ark and still needs time to figure out what exactly his role is.

The Tampa Bay Lightning made Vladislav Namestnikov a better player by rolling him on a line with Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos. The supporting talent around him skewed Namestnikov’s production for the better. With the Rangers, he’s primarily centered a line with Vesey and Mats Zuccarello. Those are not exactly equitable linemates for comparison.

The biggest determining factor for what Namestnikov will command as a restricted free agent is what the Rangers expect from him. If the front office views him as a supporting character in the same vein as J.T Miller, he is a lock for a bridge deal. This is the exact treatment Miller got and their levels of production are fairly similar. The only discrepancy is that Namestnikov is more of a play creator than a scorer.

The way the Rangers acquired Namestnikov makes him a more important target than Spooner. The fact that Spooner was the throw in for taking on a salary dump inherently means his team valued him less. Namestnikov is what the Rangers wanted for one of their best young players. Letting the Michigan native go for absolutely nothing would be a poor choice.

Of all the restricted free agents the Rangers have, Kevin Hayes might have the highest ceiling.

Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault has criminally mismanaged Kevin Hayes during the center’s time with the team. This chronic mismanagement of talent began last season when Hayes started getting a majority of his starts in the defensive zone. There was nothing about the Boston College alumnus that screamed out shutdown center. Somehow, Hayes has turned in a twenty goal season under the worst conditions possible.

With a head coach that better utilizes his skillset, the Boston native is a threat for a sixty point season. This is where the difficulty in negotiating with Hayes will come this summer. There is a serious argument that the center has yet to scratch the surface of the NHL player he actually is because of his coach.

This is why of all the Ranger forwards that are restricted free agents, Hayes is the most important. The team does not actually know what it has in Hayes and it will drive up the average annual cost of his contract. However, going forward, he is arguably the team’s most important center.

That is why negotiating a long-term deal instead of a bridge deal is vital. The Rangers would be better off paying a little extra for two of his unrestricted free agency years now than down the road when they’d be more expensive. Like any contract, this would be a gamble, but this season, Hayes has proven himself a good bet.