New York Rangers: Next year’s free agent class is worth waiting for

The New York Rangers are flush with cap space and could fill a lot of holes this summer. However, an uninspiring free agent class makes this a risky proposition.

For the first time in recent memory, the Rangers are not up against the cap ceiling. General Manager Jeff Gorton’s decision to sell off assets at the trade deadline was a wise one. In selling off his big cap hit players, he freed up space to make further moves. In a salary cap sport, a team can only improve by as much cap space as they have.

The Rangers, seemingly more than other organizations, have had their fare share of free agency blunders. Somehow, when superstar players don the blue sweater with Rangers across the chest, their ability dries up. Chris Drury and Scott Gomez both lost their effectiveness over night after signing long term free agent contracts.

Now, a team should always be in the market to improve. However, if the market is not conducive to improving, it is illogical to just throw money at the problem. This is a mistake that some team makes every year when the free agency window opens. Teams like the Vancouver Canucks and Montreal Canadiens have made it common place to just fling money at players without thinking things through.

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The problem for New York is that the team has cap space now, but the free agent class is terrible. If the team can reserve some cap space for next summer, all bets are off.

The bad

There is no metric under the sun that explains why the San Jose Sharks threw a seven year, $7 million per season deal at Evander Kane. Sure, in a vacuum, Kane’s 14 points in 17 games looked nice. In addition, for the first time in a long time, Kane seemed to actually enjoy playing the game of hockey. Several years in both Winnipeg and Buffalo had sapped the forward of his competitive drive and he was just going through the motions.

However, this deal was widely panned as a team falling in love with a small sample size. The forward’s best season as a pro came way back during the 2011-2012 season in which he posted 30 goals and 57 points. Even a hypothetical 30 goal scoring Kane will struggle to live up to the contract he signed with San Jose.

Outside of Kane, this summer’s other big fish is Washington Capitals defenseman John Carlson. (Being that it is unknown if John Tavares would even consider signing with the Rangers, he stays out of this) At face value, Carlson is a reliable top pair defenseman that posts outstanding power play numbers. However, at a deeper level, it is apparent that his production is derived from playing on a unit with Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Carlson fails to generate any offense of his own, and is a career negative possession player.

Whatever team signs Carlson to his last big contract will get two or three good years and then four or five years of dead weight.

Down the road

It truly is a shame that next year’s free agent class is still a year away. Being that the Rangers are so starved for a number one defenseman, they would have their pick of the litter. Amongst the star studded free agents in the summer of 2019 are Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty, Oliver Ekman-Larson, Ryan McDonagh, Jake Gardiner, Ryan Ellis and Nate Schmidt.

Should any of those defenseman hit unrestricted free agency on July 1 of next year, they would launch a feeding frenzy. Just the possibility of upgrading the Rangers blue line is a tantalizing proposition. The defense was far and away the weakest link of last year’s team, and it has only gotten worse. Barring a trade or Quinn Hughes falling to nine, the Rangers might have to wait until next year to fill their biggest need.

Outside of the defenseman, Artemi Panarin, Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, Tyler Seguin, Jeff Skinner, Blake Wheeler and Max Pacioretty are all free agents next summer as well. As a franchise that lacks true high end talent, the Rangers would be drastically improved with any of these forwards in the fold.

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With so many appetizing options on the table for next summer, the Rangers would be better off not opening the check book this July. The team should extend its key restricted free agents, find one year stop gaps, and stay financially flexible for the biggest free agency window in the history of the league.