I so seldom have the opportunity to say this about one of the teams I root for, but here goes. The Rangers had themselves a pretty good day yesterday. In fact, it was one of the best days the organization has had in quite some time. And that's saying something, given that last year they chose Kappo Kakko with their first-round pick and signed Artemi Panarin. Larry Brooks of the New York Post put it best: "The Rangers are finally back."
Going into the trade deadline, it was looking more and more like the Rangers were going to trade pending unrestricted free agent Chris Kreider to one of several teams for a first round pick and a top prospect. Supposedly, the Colorado Avalanche and the Boston Bruins were the most likely destinations for Kreider.
Both sides, it seemed, were at an impasse. Kreider, multiple sources said, wanted $7 million a year for six years, the Rangers were willing to go as high as $6 million per. Given that Kreider's market value as a free agent would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.5 million a year, a trade seemed imminent.
But then both sides compromised and met in the middle. They finally came up with a deal that will pay Kreider $6.5 million per year, but for seven years. The extra year was, no doubt, a concession from the organization to keep Kreider in a Rangers' uniform throughout the rest of his playing career.
One cannot overlook the significance of this deal. Ever since Jeff Gorton informed Rangers' fans in February of 2018 that the organization was going to rebuild, the Blueshirts have been in sell mode. There are now only four players left from the team that went to the Stanley Cup finals back in 2014: Henrik Lundqvist, Marc Staal, Jesper Fast and Kreider. And Fast, it should be noted, played only 11 games that year with no points.
A lot of talented players have been shipped out since then and a lot of promising prospects have taken their place. But prospects don't always pan out the way you think they will. And even for a fan base as loyal as the Rangers, management had to give them something to hope for. So Gorton and team president John Davidson rolled up their sleeves, sharpened their pencils and made it happen.
Kreider was having himself one helluva season going into the trade deadline, which usually translates into landing a bigger haul. Either those offers weren't enticing enough or Gorton and Davidson simply decided that it was more important to keep an integral member of this team in the fold. Regardless, it was the correct thing to do. Maybe the last three years of this contract don't equal the first four; that's the chance you take when you sign a player to a deal like this. There's always an element of risk, on both sides. Kreider undoubtedly left a lot of money on the table; and the Rangers compensated him by agreeing to the extra year. Both sides got what they wanted: Kreider got the security of a long-term deal; the Rangers locked up a valued asset at a reduced price.
But Gorton and Davidson weren't done. Now that they locked up Kreider, they had another problem: how to pay him. It should be no secret that next year the Rangers were going to be carrying a lot of dead-cap space, the vast majority of it courtesy of their decision to buy out Kevin Shattenkirk before the start of this season. The amount of that hit comes to $6.1 million, only $400 thousand less than what Kreider will earn. And with three restricted free agents to contend with during the off season - two of them in line to receive significant pay increases - the Rangers were looking at cap hell if they didn't get some relief, and soon.
So they traded Brady Skjei to the Carolina Hurricanes for a first-round pick. For all intents and purposes, it was a salary dump. Skjei was in the second year of a six year contract worth $5.25 million per. Without him on the books next year, the Rangers will have the resources necessary to retain all their RFAs in the off season, and maybe even add a depth player.
So why would the Rangers give up on a promising defenseman who's only 25, especially when they don't have a lot of depth on the left side? Apart from the monetary relief trading him gave them, the fact is that there are currently two players in the system who are projected to be better than Skjei and could compete for roster spots next year: the first is Libor Hajek, the throw in from the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller trade two seasons ago, who is having an outstanding year with the Hartford Wolfpack; the second is 2018 first-round pick K'Andre Miller, who is currently playing for the University of Wisconsin, but could be playing for the Blueshirts next year. And let's not forget that Marc Staal and Brendon Smith are still under contract for 2020-21 and are hardly chopped liver.
To sum up, yesterday was a pretty good day for the Rangers. They kept an important cog in an engine that is a couple of years away from possibly contending for the Stanley Cup, and they did it while clearing the cap room necessary to keep their core together for the foreseeable future. To the fans who have been patient throughout this whole process, they can now take comfort in the knowledge that this organization, while not completely done retooling, has nonetheless committed to putting a winning product on the ice.
