New York Rangers give up on prospect Nico Gross

The New York Rangers didn’t offer prospect Nico Gross a contract and he is now a free agent

The New York Rangers had until 5pm on June 1 to sign Swiss defenseman Nico Gross to his entry level contract.  Since they didn’t he is now a free  agent, free to pursue a career with any team that may want him.

Nico Gross was drafted in the fourth round of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, going 101st overall.  Although born and raised in Switerland, Gross decided to come to North America to pursue his hockey dream and he played for the Oshawa General of the OHL.  He just finished his third full season for Oshawa and also was a key player for the Swiss junior team at the WJC.

NHL teams own the rights to players they draft for a set amount of time. Usually, a team holds the rights of a player drafted at age 18 for four years, but for Gross it was only two years. Those two years expired  on Monday and Gross has gone the way of former draft picks like  Dominik Lakatos, Daniel Bernhardt and Patrik Virta.

A curious decision?

The decision to not sign Gross could be seen as questionable.  The 20 year old left handed defenseman had his best season with the Generals and served as an assistant captain. He scored nine goals and  added 24 assists for 33 points. In 53 games he scored two more goals than he did in his first two seasons in the OHL and his 33 points were one less than the 34 he accumulated over the two prior years.

His goal scoring was unexpected with the  highlight his first career hat trick in November for Oshawa.

Gross was also an important player for the Swiss national junior team that made the World Junior Championships.  He was co-captain and played on their top defense pairing, though the Swiss team was eliminated in the preliminary round of the tournament.  Gross did suffer an injury that limited him to only three games in which he registered one goal.

There has been speculation that the Rangers didn’t want to use a contract on Gross as they have 45 players under contract and are five away from the 50 player limit. There’s still a chance that they will be signing Morgan Barron and Nils Lundkvist and they are close to maxing out.

That argument doesn’t make that much sense as they have nine expiring contracts including some players who will definitely not be returning like Micheal Haley, Matt Beleskey and others on the Hartford roster.

Since they could have made room for him on the roster, the decision by the Rangers’ brass has to be that Gross doesn’t have an AHL or NHL future. With a sizeable prospect pool on defense, Gross had apparently slipped down the priority list especially with the additions of defensemen Matthew Robertson,  Zac Jones, Hunter Skinner and the development of blueline prospects like Simon Kjellberg and Jacob Ragnarsson

It remains to be seen if there will be any interest by other NHL teams in Gross and a return to Switzerland is always an option.