New York Rangers: Throwing Skjeid

The real benefit

The real value to the Rangers is the cap space.  If the Rangers can move Skjei and open up that cap space then there is the real possibility that they can bring back both Chris Kreider and Ryan Strome on multi-year deals and offer DeAngelo a nice bridge deal as a restricted free agent.

Keep in mind that Strome is also a restricted free agent at the end of the year so he is not due for a really big increase over the $3.1 million he is making this year.  Plus, the guy is on his third team, has finally found a home, and is playing with the ridiculously talented Artemi Panarin.  You would think he would want to stick around at a decent price, although he can also opt for arbitration.

Some will immediately dismiss this as ridiculous, but let’s look again at the Toronto game, and the Carolina game before that.  It appears that David Quinn has finally settled into a rhythm here with his top three lines.  Perhaps he used the Christmas gift we gave him.

He rolled Artemi Panarin with Strome and Jesper Fast.  The Panarin/Strome combination has been lethal all year. Why not keep them together for a long time.  For now Fast provides the workman like effort that is supporting the line, but if you can see Kappo Kakko in that spot next year, it should give you chills.

He rolled Mika Zibanejad with Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich, the teams most successful line last year, and it paid dividends.  Clearly Kreider and Zibanejad have something going on.  They just click. Just imagine how good they will be once Buchnevich gets out of his own head and just starts shooting the puck.

Building a team means building consistency. The best teams that win year after year are the ones that find a way to keep their best players together. Keeping these top Ranger lines together for the rest of this year with the possibility of locking them up for three or four more years is something Ranger fans should be drooling over.

The first step in that even becoming a possibility means moving Brady Skjei.