The New York Rangers should make the most of their cap space by signing free agents to one year deals at above market value prices.
As you have heard a million times this offseason, the New York Rangers have oodles of cap space, ready to spend via trade of free agency.
The best way to waste it this year — or honestly, any year — is to sign players in free agency for the long term. Anything more than a three year contract that the Rangers fork over from here until October, unless it’s to a young RFA, is really bad.
But to that end, the Rangers should spend a lot of their near $30 million in cap space in the free agent pool. And there are definitely a lot of interesting players swimming around these waters right now.
The best course of action for the Rangers in this year’s free agent period is to find two or three players and give them one-year contracts while paying them above market value if need be.
This would be a brilliant move for the Rangers as they continue their process of rebuilding and acquiring assets. If the team is out of the playoff race in February, as expected, the team could then flip these players at the deadline while retaining 50 percent of their salary for the rest of the season. By doing this, the team would acquire even more prospects/picks to go with their already growing prospect pool.
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So for instance, let’s take a look at a project where Hockey Graphs writer Matt Cane predicted each free agent’s future contract.
Let’s take a look at a guy like Patrick Maroon. According to Cane’s formula, Maroon’s projected cap hit for a contract of one year is $3.8 million, $4.2 million for two years, $4.9 million for three years and $5.3 million for four years.
For a rebuilding team like the Rangers, they’d need to overpay a bit on the AAV on a one year deal to get a free agent to give up on a long-term deal. Maybe bringing Maroon in on a one-year, $5 million deal, paying him more than any other team would, would seal the deal for the Rangers.
At the deadline, the Rangers could trade Marron with 50 percent retained salary (so a $2.5 million cap hit, in this theory) for a second round pick or a prospect or two.
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It’s a different strategy, for sure, but the Rangers are not going to sit with their hands under their butts come July 1. They are going to be active and aggressive, as any rebuilding team should be.