The odds on which Rangers will be gone next season

Every off-season for a hockey team brings changes in personnel.  This year won’t be any different for the New York Rangers. What are the odds on players leaving?

Every year there are changes made to an NHL team’s roster.  The New York Rangers currently have an active roster of 22 players and have 47 players under contract.   Let’s play the oddsmaker and determine who will be and who won’t be in the Rangers organization next season.

First, some parameters. There are actually four rosters that an NHL team has to maintain.  The first is 20 players who can dress for a game.  The second is the active roster and that is limited to 23 players.  The Rangers are allowed to have a maximum of 50 players under contract.  Finally, there is a “reserve list”    The reserve list is made up of the players under contract as well as the players the team owns the rights to.

The most important number is the 50 contract maximum and the Rangers currently have 47 players signed,  pretty close to the cut off.  Add in the contracts that start next season (K’Andre Miller and Patrick Khodorenko) and Micheal Haley whois  on Injured Reserve and that totals 49.

For the purposes of setting the odds, we are going to assume that the team will not trade or buy out any players and the Rangers will manage their roster limits through contracts.  That means extending or not extending qualifying offers to RFA’s or re-signing players under contract.

Not going anywhere

There are 29 players in the organization who are under contract next season and will most likely be with the team (barring a trade).

Forwards under contract : 15 (active roster in italics)
Pavel Buchnevich
Filip Chytil
Julien Gauthier
Brett Howden
Kaapo Kakko
Chris Kreider
Artemi Panarin
Mika Zibanejad
Lias Andersson
Jake Elmer
Tim Gettinger
Patrick Khodorenko
Vitali Kravtsov
Patrick Newell
Ty Ronning

Defensemen under contract: 11 (active roster in italics)
Adam Fox
Ryan Lindgren
Brendan Smith
Marc Staal
Jacob Trouba
Sean Day
Libor Hajek
K’Andre Miller
Tarmo Reunanen
Matthew Robertson
Yegor Rykov

Goaltenders under contract: 3 (active roster in italics)
Henrik Lundqvist
Igor Shesterkin
Adam Huska

That leaves 20 players who are currently under contract who may not be with the organization. Here is an estimation of the odds for these players returning to the organization.  Again, these are just guesses based on performance, contracts and cap constraints.