When Mats Zuccarello torched the New York Rangers in a recent interview in Norway, it refocused attention on the team’s treatment of Henrik Lundqvist. It isn’t a pretty situation.
From Mats Zuccarello’s comments in his recent interview, it appears that some players have as romanticized a view of their relationship with professional sports team as their fans do. The Norwegian actually believed that because he signed a multi-year contract for less money than he could have made on the open market, the team would reward him for bailing them out of an ugly cap situation.
"“Now you see that being nice to a club, or taking less pay because you are loyal, turns out to be just nonsense….Everything was going to be fine and great, but then the management decides, and then you are not worth a s–t.” – Mats Zuccarello, April 2020"
Those are pretty harsh words and shows just how bitter Zuccarello is towards Rangers management. You can be sure that when Henrik Lundqvist finally opens up about his treatment long after his Rangers career is over, he will have similar feelings.
The reality
The Zuccarello and Lundqvist situations are completely different. As a forward, the Rangers had the option of keeping him and reducing his playing time or shifting him to a different line. He could have stayed with the team in a different role.
As far as Lundqvist goes, the team has far fewer options. In reality an NHL team can only carry two goalies. With Igor Shesterkin the Rangers have their goaltender of the future, the next Lundqvist. Faced with a decision between a 24-year old Alexandar Georgiev on an entry level contract or a 38-year old legend who is clearly past his prime and is making $8.5 million a year, the team had to make a choice.
All reports are that the Rangers dangled Georgiev as trade bait at the deadline, but as much as Ranger fans don’t want to hear it, the market was not there. Georgiev has played well, but to be honest, decent backup goalies are not a rarity in the NHL and they weren’t going to give him away.
Still, considering age and salary, the team has decided to go with a Shesterkin-Georgiev tandem and it’s hard to argue against that.
Cap considerations
The salary cap is the prime culprit in all of these scenarios. At $8.5 million, Lundqivst is just too expensive to keep around. A buyout is inevitable and it will free up the cash the team needs to pay some of their young stars.
The cap played a role in Zuccarello’s departure. At $4.5 million he would have been seeking a raise on an extension two summers ago and that was just not going to happen. The team couldn’t afford it. There’s no telling if he would have been willing to sign a multi-year deal for a nominal increase in pay so he could end his career as a Ranger, but it doesn’t matter, they couldn’t have done it anyway.
There’s also no way of knowing what they told Zuccarello when he signed that team-friendly deal in 2015. Did they intimate that he would be a Ranger for life? Did they promise a bigger payday when the contract expired? Only Zuccarello and Glen Sather know.
But it’s not just the salary cap. Teams make tough moves for other reasons.