Rangers going BIG Name Hunting this summer

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On Friday night, the great Pierre LeBrun said that he expects the Rangers to start spending on some big name this offseason. He states the Rangers feel they’ve gotten young enough and now it is time to add.

Big Name Hunting

The two biggest names out are Artemi Panarin and Erik Karlsson IF he doesn’t re-sign with San Jose and hits the market on July 1st. Recently, I wrote a post about why I think the Rangers should target Karlsson over Panarin if they both presented themselves as players that wanted to play for the Rangers. I said it would be very difficult to get them both under contract and still roster a decent team. After some digging, I found a way that the Rangers can get them both under, and still put a competitive team on the ice.

Before I get started here, these moves are based solely on opinion. I thought it would be fun to try and create a roster where the Rangers sign Panarin and Karlsson.

Making it happen

The Rangers are expected to have almost $22 million in cap space when the new season begins. Let’s start with the money allocated to Panarin and Karlsson. I will assume they both get the max of 7-years and an AAV of $11 million, so that right there soaks up all of the (assumed) $22 million in cap that they have.

Now the question is how do they create more space and roster a team? They have four RFAs in Tony DeAngelo, Brendan Lemieux, Pavel Buchnevich, and Neil Pionk. They would give Lemieux, Buchnevich, Pionk, and DeAngelo bridge deals. Some contract estimates for those guys are as follows:

Buchnevich: 2 years – $2.75 million AAV, Lemieux: 2 years – $865,000 AAV, Neil Pionk: 2 years – $1.5 million AAV, Tony DeAngelo 2 years – $2 million AAV.

As for trades and buyouts. The Rangers would trade Vlad Namestnikov and his $4 million cap hit, trade Kevin Shattenkirk and his $6.65 million cap hit while retaining 50% of his salary, and buyout Brendan Smith. Smith’s contract will carry $4.35 million next year, and a buyout will save the Rangers $3.2 million in 2019-2020. So with all those (fictional) moves this off-season, this is what a Rangers roster could possibly look like on opening night October of 2019:


Huge shoutout to Stat Boy Steven on a lot of assistance with this. Also as always, shoutout to CapFriendly for making all of these features accessible.

Editor’s Note: Trading Shattenkirk and a 50% is highly unlikely. When I heard the news I tweeted this out – Anthony

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