How will the New York Rangers look on opening night?

Too much of a good thing

The New York Rangers have eight players on ELC’s, including first overall pick Alexis Lafrenière, currently listed on the NHL roster. With each of these contracts, there is the potential for performance bonuses to be earned. As of this writing, the Rangers could potentially owe $10,062,500 in bonuses due at the end of the season. While not all of the bonuses milestones will be met, the team does need to be fiscally responsible and account for the possibility.

Additionally, as performance bonuses are only potential earnings, teams are permitted a carryover allowance into the next season should any achieved bonuses push a team over the cap limit. The carryover allowance is equal to $6,112,500, which forces a team with bonus potential in excess of this total to maintain a bonus cushion, creating more dead cap space. The Rangers current bonus cushion is $3,950,000, bringing their total dead cap hit to just short of $17 million.

After accounting for the dead cap space, the Rangers are left with $11,729,367 available to retain their three RFA’s. Each of the RFA’s, DeAngelo, Strome, and Brendan Lemieux are headed to salary arbitration hearings over the next three weeks. Expectations are that it will take a minimum of $11.5 million to retain all three players. That leaves very little room for any of the players to be awarded any more than the expected minimums.

The Rangers would do well to agree to terms with, or move on from, each player before they reach their respective arbitration hearing dates. If no such agreements are able to be reached, the team may be forced into some hard decisions.  In fact, to remain cap compliant, it would already be in the Rangers best interests to search out trading partners for Ryan Strome.