The Rangers need to buy out Henrik Lundqvist

Henrik Lundqvist has one more year on his contract to the tune of $8.5 million.  With a severe cap situation looming for the New York Rangers, buying him out is a solution.

This topic is guaranteed to be divisive.  As a longtime New York Rangers fan I have seen the team treat players like Ed Giacomin, Brian Leetch and Mark Messier badly, dishonoring their service to the organization.  Doing the same to Henrik Lundqvist is the last thing anyone should want to see.

There’s no need to recap Lundqvist’s career or contributions, let’s just say he is one of the greatest New York Rangers ever. But hockey is a business and the NHL has become a league driven by the bottom line.  The salary cap has forced teams to make tough decisions in order to succeed.  Buying out Henrik Lundqvist would be the direct result of a flawed salary structure, but the salary cap  would be the culprit, not only the organization.

It’s not unheard of.  Corey Perry was a Hart Trophy winner and an All-Star.  He is in the all-time top three in every Anaheim offensive category.  He was bought out this summer and is playing for Dallas.  Tampa bought out Vincent Lecavalier. The Rangers bought out Dan Girardi. .

The numbers

In a post earlier I went into the Rangers’ 2020-21 cap situation in detail.  In their current scenario, they will have a hard time keeping all of their arbitration eligible restricted free agents and replacing their departing free agents (Chris Kreider & Jesper Fast) with anyone equal to them.

The team needs to improve and if the team is betting on Kreider and Fast being replaced immediately by Kravtsov and Andersson, that is going to be a challenge.

Buying Lundqvist out means his cap hit in 2020-21 would drop to $5.5 million, a savings of $3 million.  There would an additional cap hit in 2021-22 of $1.5 million, but that would be alleviated when Marc Staal and Brendan Smith come off the payroll, saving $10 million.

In an era when payroll is calculated to the penny, $3 million is a significant amount and can be the difference between retaining Ryan Strome or Tony DeAngelo or being forced to trade them.  Let’s not forget the meager return the Rangers got for Jimmy Vesey and Vlad Namestnikov when other teams knew that the Blueshirts needed cap relief.

It would also give the team flexibility to try to go out and sign a free agent for more than the league minimum. They would have the option of going after a Michael Grabner-type ($1.65 million in 2016) as opposed to a Greg McKegg ($750k in 2019).

The non-financial benefit

Buying out Lundqvist would immediately alleviate the logjam in goal.  The team would be able to move forward with Alexandar Georgiev and Igor Shesterkin as their two goaltenders.  The battle for the top job would be between those two starting next season.

Making such a dramatic roster decision now, will get a tough call out of the way.  Considering Lundqvist’s competitive nature and his belief in his own ability, who’s to say that he will not want to play past next season?  If so, the Rangers will be forced to say good-bye to their future Hall of Famer in a year anyway since they need to commit to their goalies of the future.  Doing it now eliminates any drama next year.