The arbitration process in the NHL for the most part is a simple formality. However, the New York Rangers cannot afford to botch this process.
For a team that is actively and admittedly rebuilding, the New York Rangers have a clear path forward. Although the team only has one contract on the books that goes past the 2020-2021 season, there is a clear core. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine what the team will look like in two or three seasons.
Typically, New York has been a team that has drafted moderately well and supplemented the picks with outside help. In addition to being aggressive in both trades and free agency, the team has had a fair amount of luck with college free agents. Now, the Rangers are in a situation where they will have to prioritize different talents over one another.
So far just one of the Ranger’s restricted free agents, Vladislav Namestnikov, has signed an extension. It is important to note that no Ranger has actually reached arbitration after filing since both Sean Avery and Nikolay Zherdev back in 2007. However, the front office could still mess up the long term relationship with certain players.
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The team has made the wrong choice during previous negotiating periods with key players and it burned them in the long term.
The bridge
In terms of the current NHL salary structure, the restricted free agent wields little power. An NHL needs to have at least seven years of service in the league or be 27 years old. This means that a player typically has two if not three contracts before reaching unrestricted free agency. There is always the possibility of an offer sheet, that is when a team makes a restricted free agent an offer that provides compensation for the player’s original team.
The contracts that restricted free agents typically sign are for one or two years and offer a slight pay bump on their previous contract. For example, Derek Stepan signed a two year deal that was worth $3.075 million per season as a bridge deal. This gave the Wisconsin alumni a bridge to his unrestricted free agent years.
However, this also created a situation in which Stepan played above his price tag. When a player is signed to a bridge deal and vastly improves during the life of a contract, as Stepan did, a team is in a bad situation. This creates an environment in which the player feels as if they were slighted and requires a higher figure on a subsequent deal. This is in part why Stepan jumped up from $3.075 million to $6.5 million per season.
The Rangers need to be careful to avoid repeating this same situation this offseason.
The Hayes dilemma
The serious problem that the Rangers have is a lack of positional variety. The team currently has Filip Chytil, Lias Andersson, Brett Howden, Mika Zibanejad, Ryan Spooner, Namestnikov and Hayes. Being that Spooner and Namestnikov do not project into the team’s long term future, the team will need to make choices.
Coming off of a career year and with no long term contract, Hayes is considered easier to move than Zibanejad. The team’s front office will have to make a gut call. There is certainly no issue with offering Hayes either a bridge deal or a long term extension. The team might be better served by keeping Hayes around long term and having strong center depth.
If the team were to keep the three center prospects in addition to Hayes and Zibanejad, it would need to move one if not two of the players to the wing to fill out the lineup. The poor decision would be bridging Hayes for one year. It is clear that Hayes loves playing in New York and he has had a great track record.
— Kevin Hayes (@KevinPHayes12) June 23, 2018
Keeping the Boston College alumni around also sends a good message to prospective college free agents: we’ll give you long term security.
Skjei season
Brady Skjei may have to prove himself on a bridge deal after a poor sophomore season. The defenseman seemed to be drowning this past season when he was playing on the top pair against the other team’s best players. Skjei’s struggles are hard to pin down to exactly one factor but there is still cause for concern.
As this past season wore on, Skjei was seemingly always missing assignments in the defensive zone or failing to prevent a zone entry. The same offensive player with a soft touch and good skating ability is still there, but Skjei needs to be more responsible. In a new defensive system that is not oriented around overloading one side of the ice, Skjei should look better.
The danger
Now, the Rangers have other restricted free agents outside of Hayes and Skjei. The future Rangers will look to these two as the building blocks of a contender. In terms of typecasting, it is easy to see Hayes serving as the new Stepan. A center that can be deployed in any zone in any situation and still manage to contribute between 40 and 50 points.
It is a bit more difficult to peg where Skjei’s production will be, but the obvious one is Ryan McDonagh. There will come a time when Skjei is the team’s number one defenseman.
The danger would lie in bridging both players and both of them vastly improving on their respective 2017-2018 campaigns. As a principle, it is important to not bridge players that a team would be better off incorporating long term. For example, the Nashville Predators have saved considerable amounts of money by avoiding bridge deals and giving players long term extensions before they are eligible for UFA status.
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The team should look to sign both to four year deals now, and save money in the long term. In addition to locking up players that are actually good, it can give the Rangers of the future two guys that will be veterans by then. It is important for young guys to have players around them that have been through some tough situations. Skjei and Hayes both survived Alain Vigneault and lived to tell the tale.