New York Rangers: Don’t lose any sleep over Tyler Motte

There has been some consternation among the New York Rangers fan base over the loss of Tyler Motte.  Let’s put that to rest.  There was no way that they were going to be able to pay a fourth-line center like Motte what he got from the Senators.  Ottawa is paying him $1.35 million, a $100k increase over what he earned last year.

The Rangers have a shade over $1 million in cap space with a 22-man roster that doesn’t include Vitali Kravtsov and his $875k cap hit.  So, add Kravtsov to the roster and they have less than $200k in cap space.

Chris Drury made up for it by signing Ryan Carpenter for the league minimum and he will fulfill the role that Motte had on last year’s team.  That is when Motte was healthy.  While the 5’10”, 190-pounder is a human wrecking ball, it has taken its toll.

As much as anything, Motte has been injury prone.  That’s no exaggeration.   Over the last three seasons, he has missed 97 out of 227 games due to injuries. That’s 43% of the games he could have played in. The last time he came close to playing almost the full schedule was in 2018-19.

Here’s the injury count:

• 2021-22:  Rangers – 15 games due to upper-body injury (including 5 playoff games)
• 2021-22:   Vancouver – 16 games due to neck injury
• 2020-21:  Vancouver – 31 games due to concussion, lower body, and undisclosed injuries.
• 2019-20:  Vancouver – 35 games due to upper body, lower body, and shoulder injuries.

While Motte is well-liked by his teammates and the fans love his energetic play, he still boasts an awful lifetime faceoff winning percentage of 37.1%.   He also is not going to light up the scoreboard.  In his one full season (74 games) he reached his career highs of nine goals and 16 points.

Motte’s replacement

Chris Drury went out and signed 31-year-old Ryan Carpenter for $750k to fill Motte’s skates this season.  He is a known commodity to Gerard Gallant, having played for him for parts of two seasons in Vegas.  It was under Gallant that he reached career highs with nine goals and 18 points.

Carpenter has been pretty sturdy, missing only the last eight games of the Blackhawks’ 2019-20 season with a concussion.  He’s bigger than Motte, at six- feet, 200 pounds, and averages 145 hits over 82 games, compared to Mott with 190.   He has a career faceoff winning percentage of 48.2% and was at 51.5% last season for Chicago and Calgary (388 draws taken).

In the big bucks world of professional sports, a half million dollars may not seem like a lot, but in a cap-constrained NHL, it’s like a fortune. Unless Tyler Motte was willing to take a 40% cut in pay, there was no way he was coming back to Broadway.