When we last left our intrepid team-builders, the Rangers had, if we over-simplify the situation a bit, saved $19.5 million by giving up Richards, Dorsett, Boyle, Falk, Pouliot, and Stralman. Significant losses, but justified. The naive fan might believe that this indicated a commitment, or at least an intention, to not overspend on players you don't need. To follow the model of absolutely every currently successful NHL team: identify your key pieces, spend the necessary money to commit to them, let the rest walk, and fill the space with the kids coming up through your system, who will develop next to great players on a winning team while costing you little enough that you can afford said great players.
Of course, Glen Sather, while quite possibly smarter than he was 5 years ago, doesn't appear ready to go all the way there. He has agreed to 9 NHL contracts since the off-season began, and they're a pretty healthy mix, spanning the gamut from "solid, inexpensive pickup" all the way to WAT.
Let's start with the restricted free agents. We already covered that Justin Falk was not qualified, but our other 4 NHL RFAs were. Recall that an RFA is not free to negotiate with other teams as long as his current team offers him a 1-year deal at his minimum qualifying offer (calculated based on his previous salary). The player has no negotiating power unless he qualifies for arbitration: a process in which a neutral third party determines a new qualifying offer value based on other NHL contracts of players comparable to him. Of course, the player and the team are free to come to any terms they choose, whether or not he qualifies for arbitration, but if the arbitration date is reached, they must abide by the arbitrator's decision. If the team doesn't want the player at his qualifying offer, he immediately becomes an unrestricted free agent (as in the case of Falk), and so remains for the rest of his career.
Prior to July 1, the Rangers qualified all their NHL RFAs other than Falk: Derick Brassard at $3.7m, Mats Zuccarello at $1.15m, Chris Kreider at $850,000, and John Moore at $850,500. No complaints so far: all four of these players deserve at least 1-year deals at that value. Unsurprisingly, the 3 of the 4 that did qualify for arbitration (all of them except J.Mo) filed for it, thinking they could get more. In all 3 cases, arbitration was avoided, which is generally regarded as a good thing.
In fact, a lot of these deals went very well. The Rangers did exactly what they should have with Moore: because he had no leverage, they waited until they got everyone else locked up before eventually signing him to exactly his qualifying offer: 1 year at $850,000. That literally couldn't have gone better. Meanwhile, Sather got to work on the three arbitration-eligible RFAs. Kreider ultimately agreed to the Rangers' now-standard bridge contract: an entry-level forward who makes a big difference to the team gets a 2-year deal at $2-3 million per year as a good-faith trial before possibly signing a longer, bigger money deal. When Brandon Dubinsky's and Ryan Callahan's entry-level contracts ended in the off-season of 2009, Sather signed each to a 2-year deal: Dubi at $1.85m per year, Cally at $2.3m per. When Carl Hagelin's and Derek Stepan's entry-level deals expired in 2013, we signed two more 2-year deals: Hagelin at $2.25m per, and Stepan at $3.075m per. These deals are win-win: the player sees a meaningful upgrade from his qualifying offer and a solid commitment, and the Rangers don't get burned long-term on someone who might fizzle out. Kreider's new deal, 2 years at $2.475 million per year, is perfect.
Zuccarello, who led the team in points and posted a zone start-adjusted CF% of 53.3%, was obviously due for a raise over his qualifying offer, and probably not an insignificant one. So the Rangers came out ahead on this one, somehow getting Zucc to agree to only one year at $3.5 million. It's commonly accepted that Zuccarello was willing to take a smaller contract than he could have gotten elsewhere because he wants to stay in New York - indeed, before his return to the NHL, he had said that the Rangers were the only team he'd want to come back and play for. So... lucky us? Let's hope that bigger contracts given to worse players don't spoil that sentiment when we try to re-up him again next year?
Anyway, that's a whole lot of not bad. Let's move on to some decisions that may have been not good. Derick Brassard saw a huge raise and a long term, signing for 5 years at $5 million per year. On its own, that contract may not be too much over what it should be. But, remember in the last post, when we mused that the Rangers didn't want to commit $4 million a year for 5 years to Pouliot, because he was a 3rd-liner who may only have been as good as his linemates? And then when we offered Zuccarello one year? I'm not saying Brassard was necessarily less valuable than the other two guys, but how does he make bank while Zucc gets a year and Pouliot walks? It's inconsistent. Whether or not it pans out is anybody's guess: I'm curious to see how all three of those guys look this season. But it's weird.
Speaking of weird and inconsistent, let's dive into the only off-season changes we haven't covered yet: the signings of 6 new free agents to fill out the roster. We'll start with a contract that, like Brassard's, is problematic more by comparison than on its own: the signing of veteran defenseman Dan Boyle to a 2-year deal at $4.5 million per year. Boyle has been a very good defensemen in his career, most recently posting a CF% of 53.3% last season while burdened with a significantly less impressive partner (his pairing with Matt Irwin had a 51.9%, while Boyle away from Irwin had a 54.8% and Irwin away from Boyle had a 47.7%). To be sure, if Boyle has another season like he did last year, he'll be a real asset to the team.
But another thing that happened this off-season was Dan Boyle's 38th birthday. While that alone doesn't make this a bad move, it does draw a stark contrast to the contract we didn't sign with Anton Stralman for 5 years at the exact same annual value. Boyle's success has been more consistent than Stralman's, as he's been in the league for longer, but we've got Boyle from ages 38-40, as opposed to Stralman from 28-33. Again, signing one while letting the other walk is, at the very least, weird.
For completeness's sake, let's move on to the two guys I don't have opinions on: right wing Chris Mueller and defenseman Mike Kostka. Mueller attempted 15 shots in 80:24 across 9 games last season as a Star, and is probably a long shot to make the lineup. Kostka could turn out to be a 3rd-pair option, playing 19 games for the Lightning last season after being claimed off of waivers on February 23 and posting a 51.9% CF% in that time, almost a full percentage point above Tampa's average. We signed them both to 1-year trial value contracts: Mueller for $600,000 and Kostka for $650,000. Low risk, valid moves, and I'm excited to take a look at Kostka in the preseason. Let's move on.
We signed two other contracts for under a million bucks each this off-season, one of which made any sense. I am cautiously optimistic about our $900,000 deal for Lee Stempniak, a right wing the Penguins acquired at the trade deadline last season to address their badly lacking third line. It seemed to me at the time to be a smart move for the Pens, and I had the impression that it really had helped. But, a quick glance at Stempniak's WOWY shows that he brought almost every linemate down last season, so it's very possible that my observations were wrong. He's another one I'm excited to see in the preseason. At the other end of my intuition lives a $700,000 deal for coke dinosaur Ryan Malone. Malone had a catastrophic 2013-'14, including a cocaine-related arrest in April and a contract buyout in June. But the thing is: that is not the problem with Ryan Malone. The problem with Ryan Malone is that, even before the candy made him decidedly less than dandy, he was a 34-year-old dingus who hadn't played over 70 games in a season since he was a Penguin in 2007-'08 and whose zone start-adjusted CF% hadn't been above his team's average since 2010-'11. And 6'4" hockey players don't exactly get better after age 35. At $700,000, this is a relatively low risk deal, but it's hard to be excited about.
On the other hand, I would pay double his salary if he takes a roster spot away from our next signing, the incomparable Tanner Glass. This news came to me on free agent day from a buddy of mine who is a Penguins fan, so I naturally assumed he was kidding. I think that, on some level, as a defense mechanism, I kind of still do. But CapGeek says that we signed Glass to 3 years at $1.45 million per year. Tanner fucking Glass. So I checked out of hockey for a while. 2 and a half months later, I still don't really have the words.
What concerns me, really, is that Glen Sather seems incapable of learning. Every off-season, he signs some big dumb guy because he's convinced that you still need one big dumb guy on your team, even though the teams that keep winning keep not having a big dumb guy, and our big dumb guy is always a bust. Donald Brashear. Derek Boogaard (the absolute tragedy of that situation notwithstanding). Arron Asham. The closest this has come to working was Dan Carcillo, who actually played well for us in his time, and who by the way we really could have kept around if we felt like we needed to fill this role, probably for significantly less money and term. Because the thing about Tanner Glass is that he's probably worse at hockey than all the guys I just mentioned. In fact, there's an argument to be made that he was the worst guy in the league last season, as he had the league's worst CF%-rel, or CF% compared to the rest of his team's CF%.
Now, to be fair, Glass was a Penguin, and the Penguins were kind of the exemplary uneven team: among the best top 6 in the league, among the worst bottom 6. So, of course, Glass's CF%-rel was going to be skewed down because it's relative to people like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. But even taken on its own, Glass's zone start-adjusted CF% was a nearly unbelievable 39.7%. 39.7! Could you imagine? His (non-adjusted) CF% of 39.6% was 18th-worst in the entire NHL, and the only linemate he didn't make worse in more than 25 minutes all season was Taylor Pyatt. While you could certainly make a solid case that he's not the worst player in the league, by no reasonable measure is he at all good.
Remember when we traded away Derek Dorsett and his 1 year left at $1,633,333? Remember when we let Dan Carcillo leave for a professional tryout with the Penguins? Remember when we let Brian Boyle walk for a 3 year, $2 million/year deal with the Lightning? All those times this off-season we didn't spend the money on the adequate 4th-liner, figuring we might instead use that money elsewhere and give some kids a chance at the roster spots? Well, instead we're just gonna spend the money on an inadequate one.
Same money as Dominic Moore, plus an extra year?? Really??
Anyway, at long last, that brings us to the end of the list of off-season moves. The Rangers' first preseason game is Monday night. Hockey is pretty much back!
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