With the seven-year contract awarded to Vincent Trocheck, there is no doubt that the NY Rangers are in a “win now” mentality. Although their Stanley Cup window opened a bit earlier than expected, it’s clear that the team’s future is tied to their Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender and a fleet of stars in their prime making big bucks.
The Rangers have three more years of Igor Shesterkin before he becomes an unrestricted free agent. The Rangers have to win the Cup before 2025-26 when a 29-year-old Shesterkin will be able to sell his services to the highest bidder.
Why? Because they may not be able to afford to keep him.
Looking ahead to 2025-26
If Shesterkin continues his stellar play he will be 29-years-old and in his prime going into the 2025-26 season. He will be looking for a big increase in his bargain rate of $5.6 million. If he remains an annual contender for the Vezina Trophy, he will be looking for a payout in the Price/Bobrovsky/Vasilevskiy range, around $10 million.
That’s the rub. According to Capfriendly.com, in 2025-26 the Rangers are projected to have over $31 million in cap space (if the cap goes up to $84.5 million). It sounds like a lot but consider this. $53,409,524 of their cap hit is committed to just seven players. That’s over 63% of the budget allocated to Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Vincent Trocheck, Chris Kreider, Barclay Goodrow, Adam Fox and Jacob Trouba. Fox is the only one of the septet who will be under 30 when Shesterkin hits free agency.
By 2025-26, the Rangers will have theoretically signed Alexis Lafreniere, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil. K’Andre Miller and Ryan Lindgren to new deals. Being conservative in estimating their payouts, it should take about $21-23 million to lock them in.
And we’re not even taking NHL minimum wage players like Braden Schneider, Vitali Kravtsov, Will Cuylle, Nils Lundkvist, Zac Jones and Dylan Garand into account. All of them will be RFA’s looking for new deals. That would leave much less than $10 million for Shesterkin and that won’t be enough.
2025-26 is when the long-term deals will begin to go south. Barclay Goodrow, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck will all be 32 years old while Artemi Panarin and Chris Kreider will be 34. Jacob Trouba will be 31. It’s worth noting that this season, of the top 30 scorers in the NHL, only three were older than 31 and they were named Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. Only seven of the top 50 point-getters were over 31 (Pavelski, Zuccarello, Marchand, Carlson).
One more reason
By 2025-26, Chris Drury will be going into his fifth year as General Manager. Only 10 of the 32 active NHL GMs have been on the job for as long as five years. Three of them have won Stanley Cups. With the average lifespan of an NHL GM less than five seasons, it’s in Drury’s best interests to win now.
It’s why surrendering six draft picks (a first, second, third, two fourth, fifth) along with Morgan Barron made a whole lot of sense. It got the Rangers to Game Six of the Eastern Conference Finals.
That’s why giving Vincent Trocheck a seven-year deal with various degrees of restrictions on movement makes sense for Drury. That’s because when a 35-year-old Trocheck is going into the last year of that deal in 2028-29, Drury will be long gone or basking in the glory of bringing one or two Cups back to Madison Square Garden.
But is it okay?
The key question is whether these are the right moves. We won’t get the answer for a few years, but there is one way that everything that Drury does makes perfect sense. That’s if they win the Stanley Cup.
Gone from the 2021-22 Rangers are Ryan Strome, Andrew Copp, Frank Vatrano, Tyler Motte (not official yet), Justin Braun, Kevin Rooney, Alexandar Georgiev, Patrik Nemeth, Keith Kinkaid and Morgan Barron along with six draft picks.
They’ve been replaced (so far) by Vincent Trocheck, Jaroslav Halak, Louis Domingue, Vitali Kravtsov and Ty Emberson. Drury still has some work to do and he still has $5,583,531 in cap space. He needs to get Kaapo Kakko under contract and sign another veteran defenseman and a depth center.
Will next year’s Rangers be a better team? They were a top NHL team before the trade deadline and one more year of experience for all of their kids will be invaluable. So, yes, they could be a better team. And when we get to 2025-26 how will we judge Chris Drury? Win a Cup and he will be a genius and a hero. Let’s hope he is exactly that.