July 1 is coming...

When we last left the cap situation, we were looking at $47,716,164 locked up under the summer cap. First, some changes to that figure. The other day, we traded Evgeny Grachev, that prospect who played 8 games last season and was not as impressive as we wanted him to be, to the Blues for a third-round pick. I had his 8 games as costing us around $56,272 against the summer cap. Additionally (subtractionally?), as you know, Derek Boogaard is no longer with us. I'm not getting into that here, save for the $1.625 million cap figure.

Finally, there's the Drury buyout. Rumor was briefly that the Rangers were not going to be able to buy out Drury, due to a degenerating knee, and would instead be placing him on Long-Term Injured Reserve for the season (this means he would not count at all against next season's cap, but his entire salary would still be on the books for the summer cap). It now looks likely, again, that the buyout will take place. We'll know within the next 3 days, after which the window for buying out contracts closes.

Here's the bottom line of the Drury buyout: if we buy out Drury's contract, it will cost us $3,716,667 against this summer's cap and against this season's cap, as well as $1,666,667 against next season's cap. If we do not buy him out, and we place him on Long-Term Injured Reserve for the season, it will cost us $7,050,000 against this summer's cap, and then nothing against this season's or next season's cap. By pushing forward with the buyout, the Rangers are boldly making the statement that they need that $3,333,333 in space right now and are willing to pay for it in future cap space.

More on that later. If we assume the buyout goes through, our new summer cap figure becomes $42,701,559. The 2011-12 salary cap has been set at $64.3 million (slightly above the projections), which puts the 2011 summer cap at $70,730,000. That leaves us $28,028,441 to work with. Of note: unless we somehow trade Wade Redden, we can continue to talk about the summer cap and never worry about next season's cap. Why? We know that when the season starts, Redden will be sent back down to the Whale (or the Rochester Americans? When does that happen?). That will take $6.5 million out of our cap hit. If we're under $70.73 million with Redden, then we're guaranteed to be under $64.23 million without him, so if we fit in the summer cap, we'll fit in the season cap.

Anyway. $28,028,441 to work with. So why the panic to save the Drury money now? You know the answer to this question: all our free agents, plus Brad Richards. The outlook for us bringing in Brad Richards is good right now: the Rangers are believed to be the front-runner, and it's been reported that he "wants to play in New York" (but hey, who doesn't?). Unfortunately, it's been reported that Richards is looking for a contract in the neighborhood of 8 years (he's already 31) in the neighborhood of $50-$55 million (cap hit of around $6.5 million). I'd like to see the length of that come down by a few years, and that probably won't happen unless the price goes up a bit (although, as Larry Brooks points out, shouldn't Richards accept a smaller deal to come to the Rangers, if he "wants to play in New York"?).

On top of Richards, there are all our free agents. Our restricted free agents are Callahan, Dubinsky, Animisov, Boyle, Gilroy, and Sauer. You'll recall how restricted free agency works: an RFA's team must extend a qualifying offer of a particular amount of money, determined by a formula based on that player's previous season's salary. If the team does not do so by July 1, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent. If they do, the player must accept this offer or file for salary arbitration, in which a third party determines how much the player is actually worth. (If the team does not accept the new value, the player becomes a UFA; if the team agrees to it, the player must also accept it). A team will often avoid salary arbitration with a very good RFA by, once free agency opens, offering him a better contract than the qualifying offer they already sent him.

The Rangers have sent qualifying offers to Callahan ($2.4m), Dubinsky ($2m), Anisimov ($803,250), Boyle ($605,000), and Sauer ($550,000). They rightly did not extend such an offer to Matt Gilroy, whose qualifying value would have been $2.1 million, a bit too high for his value. The Rangers did reportedly offer Gilroy a more modest deal, but he will be testing the free agent waters come July 1 and seeing what else he is offered. If some other team wants to offer him $2 million, Godspeed; otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised to see him back in a Blueshirt for whatever smaller offer the Rangers sent.

So, those qualifying offers tie up an additional $6,358,250, leaving $21,670,191 to work with under the summer cap. However, it's worth noting that every one of those qualifiers is a low-ball figure for what that player is actually worth to the team. Callahan, Dubinsky, and Boyle all qualify for arbitration (and almost certainly would file if they did not get better offers from the Rangers). Anisimov and Sauer do not (they have too little NHL experience to be permitted to file for arbitration), but it is highly unlikely that the Rangers will not offer them more than their qualifiers, given their contributions to the team.

So, that figure of $21.7 million needs to account for Richards and for probably raises to all 5 of those RFAs. Then it also needs to be used to hire whatever additional UFAs we want (back). We already mentioned Gilroy, but we also have Frolov, Prospal, Fedotenko, McCabe, and Eminger going into free agency. Clearly, we're not bringing all of those guys back (Frolov and McCabe seem sure to go), but we're also not bringing back none of them. The Rangers have made it clear that they'd like to get Fedotenko back at least, but I also think it would be foolish not to throw another million or two Prospal's way for another year (and, if the price is right, I'd be happy to see Eminger return, especially if Gilroy doesn't).

Which means we have (approximately) $21,670,191 to spend on:
--Brad Richards
--(Probably substantial) raises to those 5 restricted free agents
--Any UFAs we want back, like Fedotenko
--Any other UFAs we want to sign

So, anyway, that's why the Rangers might want to buy out Drury and save the money right now. As for timeline, July 1 is Friday. So all buyouts have to happen by Thursday. To be bought out, a player must first clear waivers, which itself takes 24 hours. So if we're buying out Drury's contract, we need to place him on waivers by the end of the day tomorrow. So we'll know more about that by then. After that, I'd expect the Richards thing to be resolved, if not on Friday, very soon after. And then, based on what's left, negotiations with our remaining RFAs. I'd like to believe we'll lock up Feds and Prospal on Friday also, but that clearly won't happen until Richards goes one way or another.

Exciting week!