New York Rangers: Labor Day news and notes

Labor Day doesn’t just symbolize the end of summer, it also kicks off the return to work for the hockey world and it is now only days before the New York Rangers will be back in action.

New York Rangers hockey news should be picking up as we near the NHL Prospect Tournament in Traverse City and the opening of training camp. In the meantime, there was some stuff going on.

Traverse City Update

We’ve written about the Traverse City NHL Prospect Tournament a few times.   The question that remains is whether Ranger fans will be able to watch the games.

The schedule of Ranger games is as follows:

3:30pm, Friday, September 6: Columbus Blue Jackets vs. Rangers

7pm, Saturday, September 7: Dallas Stars vs. Rangers

2:30pm, Monday, September 9:  Minnesota Wild vs. Rangers

Depending on how the Rangers do, they will play on Tuesday.  The Blueshirts are in the Ted Lindsay Division along with Carolina, Columbus and Minnesota.   The Gordie Howe Division is comprised of Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and Toronto

Tuesday, September 10 (times TBA):

Seventh-Place Game between 4th place teams from both divisions
Fifth-Place Game between 3rd place teams from both divisions
Third-Place Game between 2nd place teams from both divisions
Championship Game between 1st place teams from both divisions

There have been confllicting tweets about the possiblity of a live stream. First came this tweet from Larry Brooks of the New York Post:

That was followed by this tweet from Vince Mercogliano of Lohud.com.

So, stay tuned, it looks like we will be able to watch at least some of the games.  In the past, the number of games live streamed has ranged all of them to just the games of one of  the teams.

Meanwhile, some Rangers prospects were in Virginia.

No movement on DeAngelo or Lemieux

Tony DeAngelo and Brendan Lemieux remain unsigned restricted free agents and if they don’t sign by September 12, they will officially be holding out.  While they have received qualifying offers from the Rangers, there has been absolutely no word on any negotiations.

The speculation (and it it completely logical) is that Jeff Gorton is desperately trying to move some contracts in order to come up with the cap space to sign both players to some kind of bridge deal.  A one year qualifying offer will mean that they will both be RFA’s next summer, but will be arbitration eligible, something the Rangers desperately want to avoid with the cap constraints that they will be facing.

Of course, the Rangers cap situation is no secret to their rivals and you can be sure that other NHL general managers are waiting to see how low the Rangers will go in getting a return for assets like Vlad Namestnikov,  Ryan Strome or even Chris Kreider.

So, when you headlines scream “holdout,” take that with a grain of salt.  There is no doubt that the team wants to re-sign both players and for longer than one year, but it will take some maneuvering to get there.

The CBA

The biggest news out of the NHL in the last week was the fact that the league is not going to re-open the Collective Bargaining Agreement for the 2020-21 season.   That means that the NHL is going to stick with the current agreement through the 2021-22 season.

Here is Commissioner Gary Bettman’s statement:

“Based on the current state of the game and the business of the game, the NHL believes it is essential to continue building upon the momentum we have created with our Players and, therefore, will not exercise its option to reopen the CBA. Rather, we are prepared to have the current CBA remain in effect for its full term – three more seasons through the conclusion of the 2021-22 season.” – Gary Bettman

The ball is now in the NHLPA’s court as they have until September 15 to decide whether they want to reopen the CBA.  If they do not, it means the current contract will be in place until September 2022.  If they choose to reopen the CBA, they will have one year to get a new deal done.

The NHL ownership, by not reopening, sent a sign to the union that they are trying to avoid another labor dispute that has resulted in three prior lockouts and the total loss of the 2004-05 season.

The announcement that the NHL ownership is not looking to get into another ugly situation that could lead to a work stoppage made this a very good Labor Day.