It's the 4th of July weekend and if that wasn’t enough to distract you from the NHL, Twitter deciding to completely disappear on all of us the morning of the Free Agency kick-off definitely may have led to you missing some news. Which is a good time to suggest to anyone reading this, now may be a good time to subscribe if you enjoy my coverage given the apparent uncertainties many of us now have in relation to Twitter. Moving back to hockey, the Rangers were surprisingly a pretty busy team throughout the first 24 hours of free agency. This article is going to focus more on the team as a whole and how Drury did in regards to filling in the blanks of this lineup as I’ll have another piece talking more specifically about each player.
It’s important to reiterate that going into the Free Agency window, Chris Drury had very little salary cap space to work with. The Rangers had roughly $11-12 million of spending money which we knew was mostly being preserved for the extensions of Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller. That being said, the fact that every signing Chris Drury and the New York Rangers made over the last 24 hours is ballpark an $800,000 per year contract, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. This is important to keep in mind when you consider the players Chris Drury was able to obtain for basically, league minimum contracts.
In the days leading up to the market opening up, the Rangers made decisions on their pending restricted free agents. All but three of which were given qualifying offers with the exception of Cooper Zech, Patrick Khodorenko and Libor Hajek. Now to anyone who isn’t super savvy with everything related to contracts, restricted free agents or RFA’s must be given a qualifying offer in order for team’s to keep their rights. Anyone not given one, becomes an unrestricted free agent, making them available to any team interested. The RFA’s who did receive qualifying offers were Lafreniere, Miller, Ty Emberson, Lauri Pajueniemi and Brandon Scanlin. It’s safe to assume the latter three will get cheap two way deals but as we know by now, Lafreniere and Miller are due raises.
As for the three names not qualified, Patrick Khodorenko was an undrafted signing out of Michigan State in the NCAA. He showed some promise in his first two campaigns with the Wolf Pack but injuries got the best of him and kept him to four games played last season. For the player, it’s certainly a shame but the Rangers aren’t missing out on much by letting him go. Same can be said for Cooper Zech, the young defenseman acquired at the trade deadline as part of the Patrick Kane deal. Zech was another undrafted player who bounced around a couple different AHL teams. He was obviously a very minor part of an otherwise big trade deadline deal for the Rangers but nevertheless, was deep in the depth charts and spent almost as much time in the ECHL than AHL last season.
As for Libor Hajek, one of the more surprising names included in the small group of guys the Rangers let go, his time has finally come. One of the last remaining pieces of the infamous Ryan McDonagh/JT Miller trade, Hajek has now had five years with the Rangers to earn his way into a permanent role with this team and through those 110 games, he was never really able to. The only season where Hajek spent the entirety of it at the NHL level with the Rangers was the COVID season where he was still mainly a taxi squad sort of option. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, Hajek had plenty of chances to prove himself but evidently, has run out of chances. We all rooted for him in the beginning, especially when you factor in what we gave up in that trade but the quicker the rebuild went down and the longer he went without doing much on the ice, the more evident it was that moving on could be in his best interest. As of right now, he remains a free agent, hopefully he can find his way somewhere else.
In addition to Hajek, the Rangers have allowed Ryan Carpenter, Tyler Motte, Jaro Halak, Niko Mikkola, Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrick Kane to hit the open market. At the moment, Motte, Halak, Tarasenko and Kane are still without a contract but Carpenter and Mikkola have found old and new homes with the San Jose Sharks and Florida Panthers. Given what the Rangers have done so far in free agency, there’s a very slim chance any of those still available names are back but I’ll get into that more towards the end of this article. For now, let’s finally get to who the Rangers signed.
The Rangers brought in the following names in Free Agency:
Blake Wheeler - Right Wing
Jonathan Quick - Goalie
Tyler Pitlick - Right Wing/Center
Riley Nash - Center/Right Wing
Alex Belzile - Right Wing
Nick Bonino - Center
Connor Mackey - Defense
Nikolas Brouillard - Defense
Erik Gustafsson - Defense
Mac Hollowell - Defense
I’m not going to get into too many specifics regarding the contracts of each player given the fact that they’re all give or take $800,000, all on a one year deal with the exception of Riley Nash who is believed to be on a two year deal. There are still a lot of specifics coming out so details are subject to change but for the most part, the Rangers added depth and filled in the holes in their lineup with a lot of veteran players. The other bonus, no pun intended, to most of these contracts going to veterans is they were able to sign for such cheap deals on the premise that performance bonuses, which do not impact the salary cap, are included. Again, I’m not going to go too much into each player as I’ll have a separate article on that but based on these signings, it’s fair to assume the Rangers will start the season looking something along the lines of:
Kreider - Zibanejad - Kakko
Panarin - Trocheck - Wheeler
Lafreniere - Chytil - Vesey
Goodrow - Bonino - Belzile/Pitlick
Lindgren - Fox
Miller - Trouba
Gustafsson - Schneider
Harpur/Jones
Shesterkin
Quick
The Rangers certainly won’t carry more than 22 players on their roster next season and could even opt to only carry 21 in an attempt to maximize their salary cap accrual. Barring any willingness from Patrick Kane or Vlad Tarasenko to sign a deal similar to Blake Wheeler’s in order to remain with the team, the Rangers will likely go into next season with the same approach as last season: Get by in the regular season, accrue cap space, buy at the deadline. It will be interesting to keep an eye on Kane and Tarasenko as this team could benefit from one more piece in their top nine unless they do plan to move Lafreniere to the right or give Othmann a chance to play at the NHL level. I wouldn’t suggest getting your hopes up on either of them returning to New York but until they put pen to paper elsewhere, you can’t totally rule it out right?
All in all, Chris Drury without question earned some praise for what he has done so far in free agency given the resources he had. The main focus moving forward will be getting contract extensions to Lafreniere and Miller and perhaps waiting to see if any trade noise picks up involving Barclay Goodrow. Aside from that, you have to think this team is ready to go with what they have to start the season and all things considered, they’re in a better spot than they were to start last season. Stay tuned for more regarding what each player will bring to this team in the coming days and as always, let’s go Rangers!
Chris Feldman
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