The Rangers’ attempt to save some money on their most important player next year, the year after that, the year after that and the three or four years after that, was costing them right now, and don’t allow anyone to convince you otherwise.
The deeper into the season Henrik Lundqvist would have gone without a contract extension, the deeper the distraction would have grown for both the franchise goaltender and the team and the more questions both parties would have been subjected to as the season evolved.
It was bad enough already with Alain Vigneault’s decision to sit Lundqvist behind Cam Talbot for consecutive games earlier in the week having created a mini-carnival following Monday’s morning skate at both the Swedish netminder’s Garden locker and at the coach’s press briefing.
But that looming destructive scenario was eliminated on Wednesday when the Rangers and the Garden did what was right and what was necessary by agreeing to a seven-year, $59.5 million extension beginning next year with Lundqvist that essentially ensures The King will reign on Broadway for the entirety of his NHL career.
Lundqvist’s future cap-hit of $8.5 million per season stands to become the fifth-highest in the NHL next season behind Washington’s Alex Ovechkin ($9.538.462), Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin ($8.7 million apiece) and Anaheim’s Corey Perry ($8.625 million).
The commitment is befitting a New York athlete of Lundqvist’s stature. He is not only the Rangers’ most important player, he is the only player on the roster whose name goes above the title on the club’s Broadway marquee.
This is what it came down to for the Rangers: they were going to pay now or they were going to pay later if Lundqvist hit the July 1 open market that could have included the market that’s going to be in Brooklyn in two years.
Adding to the problem was the Rangers were paying a price already even as they were attempting to hold down the cost on the goaltender, playing middling 14-14 hockey heading into Thursday’s match in Buffalo against the Sabres, with Lundqvist off to an uncharacteristically middling start as measured against his own lofty standards.
General manager Glen Sather, who informed Lundqvist’s representatives at the start of the process he would not go to the eight-year maximum length, for the longest time held the line at six years. The Rangers too are believed to have been at somewhere between $7.5 million and $8 million per season on the offer.
It is a hard cap league, so prudence does come in handy, especially in negotiating a deal with an athlete who will turn 32 in March. But this was the wrong time for Sather and the Rangers to find religion and the wrong athlete to (within context) hardball. You sign the face of the franchise. You get it done.
The $64.3 million cap is expected to rise to more than $70 million next season when Lundqvist’s cap-charge increases from its current $6.875 million. By 2019-20, when Lundqvist will turn 38 in the sixth year of the contract and the final guaranteed year of the current collective bargaining agreement, the cap is likely to be close to $100 million.
True, it would be irresponsible not to think of the future, but even more foolish to obsess over the year 2020 when your team is back to going on nearly two decades since (19 years) since the franchise’s one and only Stanley Cup since 1940.
The Rangers can turn their attention to the trickier tasks of locking up captain Ryan Callahan and first-pair defenseman Dan Girardi, both of whom are pending unrestricted free agents, and both of whom are going to command more on the open market than Sather likely is comfortable paying at the moment.
If David Clarkson could get seven years at $36.75 million from the Maple Leafs last summer after rejecting more from the Oilers, what do you suppose Callahan, 29 in March, will be offered by numerous suitors?
If Dennis Wideman could get five years at $26.25 million from the Flames two summers ago, what kind of offers do you suppose Girardi, a right-handed minutes-eater who will turn 30 in April, will attract?
There isn’t necessarily an obvious right and wrong in the negotiations with either of these important players. Sather will have difficult calls on both.
But the call on Lundqvist never should have been difficult at all. The Rangers paid the King his King’s Ransom. There was no other option, and they should have been happy to do it.