The New York Rangers have hours to decide if they want to make a qualifying offer to Ryan Strome
The deadline for qualifying offers to be made to Restricted Free Agents is 5pm EST. If the Rangers don’t qualify Strome by that time, he becomes an Unrestricted Free Agent. There had been speculation that the Rangers would try to deal Strome for draft picks, but so far it appears that there have been no takers.
Jeff Gorton was asked about qualifying offers and all he would saw was ” We’ve got some out and others we’ve held back. After day two of the draft we’ll answer (any questions).” His reluctance to talk about Strome was an indication that the situation is not resolved.
It’s been reported that the team has qualified Brendan Lemieux, Tony DeAngelo and Alexandar Georgiev, leaving Strome the only regular who has not been. It’s not known if the team has qualified depth forward Phil DiGiuseppe or minor leaguers Ryan Gropp, Gabriel Fontaine, Darren Raddysh and Brandon Crawley.
If there is no deal forthcoming for Strome, the Rangers could qualify him with the possibility of an arbitration looming. If he is awarded a big payday, the Rangers could walk away and he would become a free agent. If he gets an award of less than $4.54 million they would have to pay him.
Letting him walk is definitely an option with the Rangers then able to use his potential salary to sign a free agent center to replace him. There are some options out there with more to come. There are reports that Nashville has placed center Kyle Turris on waivers for the purpose of buying him out. While Turris has not been the player that he was earlier in his career, he is still an excellent faceoff man and could be a solid third line center if the Rangers move Filip Chytil up. Erik Haula is another free agent center who has been the subject of some speculation.
European news
Yegor Rykov and CSKA Moscow were in action Tuesday, winning over Dynamo Moscow 2-0 to improve their record to 9-1-1.
Rykov played 17 shifts and 12:44 minutes. He was on ice for one CSKA goal to finish +1 for the night. He had one hit in the game and played the fewest minutes of any CSKA defender.
Traktor played Wednesday, defeating Kunlun Red Star, but without Vitali Kravtsov in the lineup as he missed his second straight game with a lower body injury.
In Sweden, defense prospect Jacob Ragnarsson is in action for Timrå in the Allsvenskan league in their match with Karlskoga.
The Swedish Hockey League (SHL) has a full schedule on Thursday.