Prospect Camp, Arbitration

Prospect Camp was last week, and wrapped up on Friday. Apparently, as you'd expect, everyone paid attention to Matt Gilroy, Michael Del Zotto, Ryan Borque, and Chris Kreider. Apparently, Evgeny Grachev joins Kreider on the list of children we might be supposed to be excited about one day. Steve Zipay tells us that he expects defensemen Gilroy, Del Zotto, Ilkka Heikkinen, and Tomas Kundratek, along with forwards Grachev, Justin Soryal, and Chris Chappell. I'd provide more details, but as it's speculation about speculation, I'll wait until it matters. List of people from Prospect Camp I am personally excited about: Matt Gilroy.

Remember my post about salary arbitration? No? Ugh, fine. No, you don't have to go back and read it, I'll explain it again. Just...pay attention this time.

Arbitration is pretty simple: the deal with restricted free agency is that a team has the right to retain a player who is a restricted free agent (which means their contract is up, but they do not yet qualify for the open market, because they're too young or too new to the NHL) if they're willing to provide a "qualifying offer" (an offer worth 100-110% of the player's current salary, depending on the age of the player). Obviously, this could screw some players into being way underpaid, if their skill level is way above their current salary, for the first big chunk of their careers. To combat this idea, some players (also based on age and tenure) are eligible to arbitrate.

Salary arbitration is exactly what it sounds like. The player is still under contract to that team, because they made the qualifying offer, but the player is allowed to propose a new salary to the team. The team is then allowed to propose a different one, and so on, back and forth, until an agreement is reached. If no agreement is reached by a deadline sometime before the next season starts, some NHL-based third party arbitrator will make a decision as to an appropriate figure between the two parties' proposals. The team then has 48 hours to reject the decision (at which point they lose their claim to the player, who becomes an unrestricted free agent) before the player is committed to the team at that salary.

Here's the point: Nikolai Zherdev and Ryan Callahan both filed for arbitration. The deadline for filing is 5:00 tonight, so don't expect other Rangers to do so also (I think Higgins is the only one eligible anyway) - it's just Zherdev and Cally. You'll recall that we qualified Zherdev at $3.25 million and Callahan at $660,000. This season's (possibly every season's?) arbitration hearing dates are July 20 - August 4. This means that a hearing will be scheduled sometime in that range between the Rangers and Zherdev, and another between the Rangers and Callahan. We have until each player's hearing to settle on a salary with that player. If we don't, the NHL will pick one for us, which we'll have to either accept or not.

We pretty much knew Cally was going to file. He's worth way more than $0.66 million, and he knows it. I talked about this in my "what is Brooks talking about with the salary cap?" post a few days ago, but I fully expect him to ask for something in the neighborhood of $2 million, and I fully expect him to get it, from us. I will be very surprised if the Callahan hearing has to take place.

The Zherdev thing makes me a little sad. $3.25 million is probably right around what he's worth right now, in my opinion - if anything, it's high - he's clearly got a lot of talent, but his value on the ice is largely unproven. I have high hopes for him, and I believe that if anyone can bring out his best, it's Tortorella, but I think $3.25 is plenty to spend on that gamble, even if I think it's the right gamble to make. It'll be interesting to see how much he thinks he's worth. If he's trying to milk us for another quarter to half million or whatever, we will probably do it, but if he's looking for way more than that, he may be trying to test the open market. I can't imagine spending more than $4 million on this kid (though Sather has spent far dumber money), but that late in the summer, I don't know what other options we'd really have to try to build a squad. If we look at our current roster and subtract Zherdev, this year quickly starts to look like a "rebuilding" year. I think we want to keep him, but not if he's extorting us. We'll see what he's asking. Hopefully we'll sign with him for not too much more, either before or after a hearing.

That's pretty much the summary. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, Larry Brooks thinks we'll go after Sergei Zubov again. That's pretty funny, whether it's true or not.