The Rangers realistic salary cap situation

The 2022-23 Rangers

Here’s the magic number:  $71,491,469.  That’s how much the team is committed to paying for players who were on the active roster in 2021-22 as well as the three buyouts still hitting the bottom line.  Here’s the list:

• Forwards (9):   Sammy Blais, Filip Chytil, Barclay Goodrow, Dryden Hunt, Chris Kreider, Alexis Lafreniere, Artemi Panarin, Ryan Reaves, Mika Zibanejad,
• Defensemen (6):  Adam Fox, Ryan Lindgren, K’Andre Miller, Patrik Nemeth, Braden Schneider, Jacob Trouba
• Goalies (1):  Igor Shesterkin
• Buyouts (3):  Tony DeAngelo, Dan Girardi, Kevin Shattenkirk

That means that the team has $11,008,531 to spend to fill out the starting lineup.  That is a minimum of four more forwards, one goalie and one defenseman.

Options in the organization

There are players who were with the team who could be back as they are Restricted Free Agents (RFA).

• Arbitration eligible RFA’s:  Julien Gauthier,  Alexandar Georgiev,  Tim Gettinger, Libor Hajek
• RFA: Kaapo Kakko

Finally, there are a number of players under contract for next season who could make the jump to the varsity. Here are the most likely suspects:

• Forwards:  Jonny Brodzinski, Will Cuylle, Vitali Kravtsov, Brennan Othmann, Lauri Pajuniemi, Gustav Rydahl, Bobby Trivigno
• Defensemen: Zac Jones, Nils Lundkvist, Matthew Robertson, Brandon Scanlin, Hunter Skinner, Jarred Tinordi

Before you get your hopes up, of this group, there are only two players most likely to be on the team next season in Kaapo Kakko and Vitali Kravtsov.  Kakko has a lot to prove and will likely be offered a bridge deal similar to the one that Filip Chytil signed before last season (2 years, $4.6 million).  Kravtsov already signed for one year at $875k.

To round out the defense, assume that it will be either Jones, Hajek or Lundkvist on the team, making about $900k.

That means adding Kakko, Kravtsov and one defenseman increases the payroll by an Average Annual Value (AAV) of $4.075 million.

That leaves $6,933,531 for the team to spend to fill whatever roster holes remain. Those holes include two more forwards and a goalie.

The center issue

The big problem facing the Rangers is the lack of a second line center. The easy solution is to re-sign Ryan Strome or Andrew Copp, but at what cost?

Copp will be highly sought after following his excellent post-deadline run with New York.  He made $3.64 million on a one year deal from Winnipeg and will be looking for $5 million or more and should get it.  At that cost, there is virtually no chance he will be a Ranger next season.

Strome made $4.5 million with the Rangers and is a possibility to stick around if he is not looking for a raise. The fact that he sustained a pelvis injury mid-season and aggravated it in the playoffs could raise some red flags among other teams.    Strome has said that he wants to stay, the question is whether anyone else is willing to pay a lot more than the Rangers can.

If Strome does take a short term flat salary deal, that leaves the Rangers with $2,433,531 in cap space.  And they still need one more forward and a goalie.

The goalie issue

The Rangers are not going to give Alexandar Georgiev a qualifying offer on his $2.425 million salary and unless they can find a taker for him for a mid-level draft pick, he will become a free agent.

That means that the Rangers need to find a netminder who can play 30 games a season and be the number one if Igor Shesterkin is injured.  And that goalie has to cost the Rangers as little as possible.

There are no in-house options for the Blueshirts.  The only other goalies under contract are 21-year-old Swedish prospect Olof Lindbom and 20-year-old Canadian prospect Dylan Garand.  Garand is the back-up of the future, but he needs to get some AHL seasoning.

Tyler Wall is an RFA, but had an unimpressive season, mostly in the ECHL.   The two top Hartford goalies are Keith Kinkaid and Adam Huska and they are both UFA’s.

That means that Chris Drury will be scouring the UFA list hoping to strike gold with a Ville Husso type netminder who made $750k for the Blues last season.

That said, it’s hard to assume that the Rangers will pay more than $1 million for a back-up netminder next season and at that number,  that drops their available cap space to $1,433,531.

That doesn’t bode well for their Unrestricted Free Agents.

The UFA’s

We’ve already looked at the Andrew Copp and Ryan Strome situation.  The other UFA’s on the team are Frank Vatrano, Tyler Motte, Justin Braun, Kevin Rooney and Greg McKegg.

In that group the only players who the Rangers could possibly fit under the remaining cap space are Rooney and McKegg. That’s a shame as Vatrano made it clear in his post-playoff comments that he would love to stay in New York, but if he is looking to make more than the $2.53 million he made last season, it’s going to be somewhere else.

Similarly, they Rangers would like to keep Tyler Motte, but he made $1.225 million last season and will be looking for a raise.  The 27-year old is the kind of energy player that GM’s covet and he is likely to get that salary boost from another team.   Justin Braun was a valuable player as a sixth defenseman in the postseason and if he is willing to sign for close to the league minimum, there is a chance he could stick around.

No matter what, can we expect the team that made it to Game Six of the Eastern Conference Finals to repeat next season?

Will they be better?

It’s easy to say that the Rangers will regress in 2022-23.  Without Copp, Vatrano, Motte and Braun, they will be much the same team that played the season before the trade deadline.  However, in those 60-odd games they contended for first place in the Metropolitan Division.

Can one more year of experience for players like Lafrenière, Chytil, Kakko, Miller, Schneider et al, offset the loss of the deadline acquisitions?  There is no doubt that they will be better and the wild card would be the new prospects who could have an impact like Kravtsov, Cuylle, Jones and Lundkvist.

Will a full season of Sammy Blais make the team better?

Even if the Rangers stand pat and re-sign Ryan Strome and find some useful inexpensive veterans to fill their holes, the team will not be worse.

But will they stand pat?

There is no doubt that Chris Drury will be making some deals this off-season.  He was careful to hold on to his assets at the deadline, trading away mostly draft picks while giving up only one player in Morgan Barron.

There’s been a lot of internet chatter about Pierre-Luc Dubois, Mark Scheifele, Patrick Kane and other possible trade targets.  It all sounds great, but the simple fact is that when it comes to the salary cap, the Rangers have very little leverage when it comes to cap relief.  They have committed over $54 million of their cap space to eight contracts that have no movement or limited movement.  That’s 65% of their payroll for eight players.

That means that the Rangers need to keep their young, cost-controlled players and fill out the roster with bargain basement veterans who can contribute.  Maybe, just maybe, if Drury can find a taker for Patrik Nemeth or even buy him out, they could afford to re-sign Frank Vatrano.

But the simple fact is the Rangers don’t have expensive players that they can dump somewhere else.  There is no cap relief in sight for the Blueshirts unless they are willing to deal Ryan Lindgren ($3mm AAV) or Filip Chytil ($2.3mm AAV).

And next summer, guess who will be coming off their bargain Entry Level Contracts and will be looking for a bigger payday?  K’Andre Miller and Alexis Lafrenière will be RFA’s while only Ryan Reaves, Sammy Blais and Dryden Hunt will be coming off the books.  Those three expiring contracts represent a savings of just over $4 million and if he plays well, they will want to keep Blais.  The good news is there is no more dead cap space due to buyouts.  That means an additional $3.4 million the team can spend mostly on Miller and Lafrenière .  What savings they get from that plus expiring contracts, plus a $1 million increase in the salary cap is barely going to help cover those new contracts plus replacing departing players like Reaves.

The good news is the Rangers have a solid core that will guarantee playoff success for years to come. It’s up to Chris Drury to work some magic and take a page from Tampa GM Julien Brisebois and Colorado GM Joe Sakic and find those inexpensive pieces of the puzzle that fill out a Stanley Cup winning team.