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.