The Rangers could still look very different in another 10 days. But if they don’t, then general manager Jeff Gorton is just fine with the heavy lifting he has already done.
“I don’t feel like we need to do anything, to be honest with you,” Gorton said Saturday after one of the biggest drafts in the club’s history this weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, having taken 18-year-old Finnish winger Kaapo Kakko with the No. 2-overall selection. Now the week-long free-agent “courting period” begins, when teams can talk to pending free agents before the market opens July 1.
“I think the last few years we try to take advantage of situations, when times come for us to jump on something, we try to do that,” Gorton said. “If something comes along and we think it’s good for us short term and long term, we’ll do it.”
No question the Rangers will inquire about Artemi Panarin, the dynamic winger leaving Columbus who knows new team president John Davidson very well and represents the class of the group available. But an annual salary-cap hit around $11 million might be tough to swallow for seven years — especially since the NHL and NHLPA announced that the ceiling for next season is going to be $81.5 million, less than the projected $83 million that was the basis for a lot of the early offseason maneuvering.
Gorton won’t know exactly how much cap room he has until he locks up his restricted free agents, the most notable being long-coveted righty-shot defenseman Jacob Trouba, obtained in a trade with the Jets just a few days before the draft. The other RFAs that need to be given new deals are Pavel Buchnevich and Brendan Lemieux up front, along with Tony DeAngelo on the back end.
That could turn the current $17 million in space into less than $5 million pretty quickly. Adding another big-ticket player would then necessitate moving some money. That brings in the possibility of trading Chris Kreider, entering the final year of his contract with a $4.625 million hit and seemingly at a standstill in negotiations for an extension. Also in play on a lesser level would be Vladislav Namestnikov ($4 million) and Jimmy Vesey ($2.275 million), or even Buchnevich, once his deal gets done.
If a trade can’t be done, there is also the option of buyouts, with defensemen Kevin Shattenkirk ($6.65 million per for the next two seasons) and Brendan Smith ($4.35 million for the next two seasons) as the prime candidates.
“We’ll have some conversations about what to do,” Gorton said. “If free agency, or trades, [means] we have to make some decisions and go that route, that’s something we’ll be ready to do.
“I think it’s all part of the plan. If we game plan for something and it happens, and we’re spending some money or something like that, then we would have to consider how else we need to move money around. Nothing is decided.”
The club is also conducting the most interesting prospects camp in recent memory, starting Monday at Chelsea Piers in Stamford, Conn., while their practice facility in Tarrytown undergoes renovations. It will be the first time Kakko dons a Rangers sweater on the ice, and with so many other interesting young players there, it should be quite the spectacle.
There will then be organizational meetings on Tuesday, as Gorton and Davidson try to get everyone on the same page as they plan for the rest of the offseason.
So a lot has been done already, and the Rangers like where they are. But there is also a lot more than can happen before it’s clear just what the Blueshirts will look like come October.
“We have to juggle everything at once,” Gorton said. “We’ll jump in at development camp, we’re going to talk to some free agents, we have some conversations going with some teams about trades. There is a little bit of everything going on. This time of year is really busy and if something changes, we’re ready for it.”