New York Rangers: Five reasons to be encouraged by the Panarin signing

When the New York Rangers won the Artemi Panarin sweepstakes, it felt different from past free agent signings.

The New York Rangers are not strangers to free agency and big name contracts.  They’ve always been big players whenever high profile free agents are to be had.  It felt like old times when the word came down that Artemi Panarin had agreed to continue his career in New York, but at the same time it felt a little different.  Here are five reason why:

Reason # 1 – He took less money

This has happened before, most recently with Kevin Shattenkirk, but in this case he turned down a lot of money.   The word is that Columbus offered him a seven-year contract with an annual AAV of $12 million or  even more. Colorado chipped in with a major offer, but the best deal on the table was from Florida. Not only did they offer more money, Florida has no state income tax and he would have been able to play with his buddy, Sergei Bobrovsky.

Why would he do that?  Because he wants to play in New York.   John Davidson had this to say about Panarin to the Journal News. 

"“He’s made it very vocal that he’s always wanted to be in a big city, and there’s no bigger city than New York,” Rangers team president John Davidson said. “In messaging with us and talking to us about how he wants to win, he actually talked about Mark Messier — what Mark Messier did with the Rangers to get into the winning part of the business.”"

If Artemi Panarin says he wants to be to this team, what Mark Messier was to the championship team of the nineties, he’s something special.

Reason number two is pretty obvious, but incredibly important.