Taking a look at the New York Rangers’ highest scoring defenseman.
With the New York Rangers set to have several estricted free agents after the playoffs conclude, they will have to make a drastic decision regarding Tony DeAngelo. Deangelo will be coming off a one-year Restricted Free Agent deal where he had no arbitration rights and is set to receive a major raise from the $925,000 he earned this past season. With the extension looming over the team, especially with DeAngelo having arbitration rights for the first time, there are several routes the team can go.
A trade
What I believe to be the least likely option, the Rangers could look to trade DeAngelo. The Rangers will be looking to re-sign several of their pending restricted free agents and trading DeAngelo would surely help put them beneath the salary cap. In addition, the team has a number of highly skilled defensive prospects who will surely be a critical part of the team in the coming years.
Why this most likely won’t happen is because there isn’t an up and comer to immediately fill the void that DeAngelo would leave. Highly touted prospect Nils Lundqvist has just opted to play another year in Sweden so he is out. Others destined to be in the NHL soon include K’Andre Miller, Yegor Rykov and Libor Hajek, however, all play the left side and the Rangers have shown a reluctance to play skaters on their off side. Even if any of them were right handed, there is a very slim chance they would be able to produce as well offensively as DeAngelo did this past season.
A long-term deal
Another option is for the Rangers to try and sign DeAngelo long term. This option is more likely because of the success DeAngelo has had the past couple of seasons. The past two seasons he has recorded the most points by a defenseman on the team, scoring 53 points in 68 games this past season, while scoring 30 points in 61 games the previous year.
His average of 0.64 points per game over the last two seasons was the 13th most among defensemen who played in 125 games. These are great offensive numbers and now with two straight years he has proven he can be consistent while still only 24 years old.
While the idea of signing a 50+ point defenseman seems like a no brainer, it may not be in the Rangers best interest. The most significant of all being the number of long term contracts the team have recently committed to. Over the past year alone, the Rangers have handed out seven year contracts to Artemi Panarin, Jacob Trouba, and Chris Kreider, the cheapest of which being $6.5 million a year. We have seen how handing out multi-year contracts to defensemen over the past several years (as in Marc Staal, Brendan Smith, and Kevin Shattenkirk) has not worked out and it would be risky for the Rangers to give out another one again just as they are recovering from those onerous deals.
A short-term deal
What I propose to be the best route the Rangers should take, is offering a bridge deal to DeAngelo for one or two years. The main reasons being is that it keeps an important player under team control in the short-term, while also practicing good asset management. By having good asset management, it gives the team the opportunity to trade out players who will require higher cap hits in order to make room for players soon due for a new contract.
Think of the big contracts the Rangers will want to give over the next couple of years. While the contracts for Henrik Lundqvist, Staal, and Smith will be coming off the books after next season, one still has to remember that many on the roster will be due for extensions in the next couple years with some projected to be very expensive (think Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, Igor Shesterkin). In just two years time will the Rangers really want to be committed to three big contracts on right defense in Trouba’s $8,000,000 contract, Fox’s big payday and also DeAngelo?
This is where asset management is so important. With the NHL’s hard salary cap, it is impossible for a team to retain every key player they have and unfortunately they must often let players go, even when both the team and the player would like to stay committed from one another.
I presume DeAngelo will end up agreeing to a one year deal with the Rangers that will be worth around $5-6 million a year. This deal, while being a large cap hit, will give the team flexibility if they choose to promote a prospect in the next couple years or if they must shed cap down the road.
When this deal is up, the Rangers would still have team control through 2021-2022 because of his RFA status, giving them the opportunity to sign him long-term then if they feel he is worth a long-term investment.
DeAngelo can guarantee that big raise with a star performance in the postseason. Outstanding play at the most crucial time of the year may help make up the Rangers’ minds about DeAngelo’s longterm future as a Ranger.