What would a contending Rangers lineup look like?
The New York Rangers last won a playoff game on May 4, 2017 against the Ottawa Senators. In that four-year gap, the organization sold off the core of a Stanley Cup contender, got two fortuitous ping pong ball bounces, and are perceived as a contender-in-the-making.
Talent evaluators peg New York’s prospect pool amongst the best in the entire league. Scott Wheeler of The Athletic ranked the Rangers as the second best pool of young players in the league behind only the Ottawa Senators.
Wheeler wrote:
The Rangers’ first three tiers here shouldn’t surprise anyone but that fourth tier may grab your attention. I think it reveals two things. The first is that the Rangers’ pool drops off in talent a little sooner than the other teams in the top five, revealing that it’s propped up by its impressive top six prospects. The second is that that last group is pretty interchangeable, so the gap between the players ranked closer to the top 10 and those ranked in the late teens isn’t all that pronounced.
Meaning that a significant amount of the Rangers’ expected success stems from just six prospects. Two of which: Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller are already on the NHL roster. The additional four: Vitali Kravtsov, Nils Lundkvist, Zac Jones and Braden Schneider are all a year or so away from the NHL.
Combine those pieces in the pipeline with those already on the roster and the image of a formidable cup contender is not so far fetched. It will be a matter of talent development and salary cap gymnastics striking at the exact right moment.
For any team to win a Stanley Cup, it requires a considerable amount of good fortune. Of the last ten Stanley Cup winners, all of them had at least one player selected in the top ten of the draft.
New York currently has five players: Mika Zibanejad, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, Ryan Strome and Jacob Trouba that were originally top ten picks. Interestingly, the Rangers three foundational pieces: Adam Fox, Artemi Panarin and Igor Shesterkin were all mid round picks or undrafted.
As for where the organization goes from here, there needs to be development from its prospect pool and to fine tune the depth roles on its roster. At the moment, the roster is top heavy, depending on just a few players to score a bulk of the team’s goals.
For all intents and purposes, the Rangers window of contention is open because of the team’s salary cap situation. Since the roster is so young, it is cost controlled for a number of years. However, if these players thrive, they will command significant salary.
Meaning, if the team’s high draft picks all hit, the organization won’t be able to afford any significant outside players without a significant jump in the NHL’s salary cap. For at least the next two seasons, the cap will be flat at $81.5 million.
The cap decisions
The organization will have $26.142 million tied up in Trouba, Panarin and Chris Kreider through the 2025–2026 season. Aside from those three players, no players are under contract past the 2022–2023 season. It’s important to understand that the team’s prospects will graduate and need raises.
If the team’s long-term plan is working, that means Lafreniere, Fox, Kakko, Kravtsov, Miller, Lundkvist and Shesterkin are all doing heavy lifting. At present, only five are on the team’s salary cap and they make a combined cap hit of $4.625 million.
Having cost controlled talent has multiple perks. First, the team gets production for below market value which is a major component to winning a championship. Then, it also allows the front office to pursue trades for elite talent should it become available. But, more on that later.
The organization has significant decisions to make this upcoming offseason. Both Pavel Buchnevich and Shesterkin are restricted free agents as well as candidates to skip one last bridge deal and instead opt for a multi-year extension.
To this point, Buchnevich always showed flashes. Now, in year five, he’s arguably been the team’s best forward through ten games.
In terms of both wins above replacement and standing points above replacement, Buchnevich has always been above replacement level. Especially from a goals above replacement per 60 perspective, he’s always created scoring chances, even on bad Ranger teams.
The organization should try to lock the forward up for the duration of the team’s window. This is the last chance to sign Buchnevich below market value as a restricted free agent. Throw in the fact he’s shown the ability to drive a line on his own this season at age 25 and there’s still time.
Signing Buchnevich now to a five or six year deal in the ballpark of $5.25 million per season would be a hefty but deserved raised. From a team building perspective, getting the forward’s age 26 and 27 seasons for $5.25 million each would make more financial sense than another bridge contract.
If the team opted for a bridge contract, Buchnevich could get something in the ballpark of 4 million each of the next two years. This would then force the team into a similar situation it was in with Kreider last year where they had to overpay for early 30s production.
The age curve above shows the change in wins above replacement over an eight year period. Buchnevich, at age 25 still has roughly two more seasons of peak productivity based on the career averages of forwards. Of course, he could be an outlier and fall somewhere off of the curve.
As for Shesterkin, the goaltender has a whopping 20 games of NHL experience to draw upon. Unlike Buchnevich who’s shown ample ability at the NHL level, Shesterkin is a prime candidate for a bridge contract.
This would allow the organization to give Shesterkin a pay raise and more time to evaluate just how good he is at the NHL level. It would not want to get locked in too early based on how 12 games went prior to the pause during the 2020 season.
Then, in my opinion, the single biggest question mark is the future of Zibanejad with the organization. The forward blossomed in New York over the last three years culminating in a 50 goal pace season before the pause last march.
I’ll get it out of the way now, yes Zibanejad had COVID-19 back in December. The forward did not have a training camp and even though he swears his conditioning is fine, he does not look right. The forward’s 2.9 shooting percentage is about 1/4th of his career average.
Throw in the fact that Zibanejad currently has the worst xGF% (expected goals for, meaning the quality of scoring chances created when he’s on the ice) of any forward on the team and it might be time to sound the alarm.
While the shooting percentage will creep back up to his average, the underlying results are concerning. Zibanejad is not creating chances from dangerous areas on the ice nor is he scoring them himself.
For a player the team might give a massive extension in 24 months, this slump should force pause. For Zibanejad’s career, his defensive prowess was always overrated and not based on any metrics. However, his offense was good enough it was tolerable.
The bar graph above shows that Zibanejad was a negative expected goals against per 60 for the last three seasons leading up to this year. This means that when he was on ice, he and his line conceded quality scoring chances that should have resulted in goals more than the mean.
Based of the 2019–2020 season, Zibanejad could’ve easily commanded north of $10 million per season on a long-term extension. Now, these drastically poor results have to force the organization to hesitate. Especially considering he’d be 29-years-old when he signed said extension.
The team would be paying at least $10 million per season for a player’s age 29–35 season. Of course, as the age curve above showed, these are a player’s least valuable seasons in terms of WAR because of age based regression.
It’d be the latest case of the organization paying a player based on pass performance instead of what said player could do going forward.
Historically, the Rangers have not given extensions to restricted free agents and opted to bridge deal them till they were unrestricted free agents. This in turn meant it often paid more for players than their production was worth because of how aggressive the aging curve is in hockey.
Designing a roster
There are a few building blocks that I’m prepared to pencil into a hypothetical contender off the bat.
Forwards
Chris Kreider-?-Pavel Buchnevich
Artemi Panarin-Filip Chytil-Alexis Lafreniere
Vitali Kravtsov-?-Kaapo Kakko
?-Brett Howden-?
Defensemen
K’Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba
Ryan Lindgren-Adam Fox
Zach Jones-Nils Lundkvist
Goaltending
Igor Shesterkin
?
The Holes
The Rangers have a dearth of talent at the center position. I’m putting Chytil in here because he’s only 21-years-old and has six more years of team control. Howden is here because the organization gave him two years to learn how to play at the NHL level and won’t be expensive.
I do not have Zibanejad or Ryan Strome in the team’s long term plans at the moment. I was always hesitant about a Zibanejad extension going forward and fair or not, his struggles this season are validating that hesitation. As for Strome, he was never going to replicate his 2019–2020 numbers.
The team is three deep on both wings and feature a solid top six of defensemen. Throw in Shesterkin between the pipes and the building blocks of a contender are pretty straightforward. The oldest of the defensemen, Trouba, will be 27 for the start of the 2021–2022 season.
Now, it’s pretty obvious that number one centers for Stanley Cup contenders are not easy to acquire. If the organization wanted to bring one from outside, it’d likely have to come via trade. The best case scenario would be something involving Zibanejad with additional assets for someone a little younger.
I’ve always been high on Jack Eichel of the Buffalo Sabres, but that seems like a Boston University fueled pipe dream.
The organization’s main goal in acquiring any talent should be to maintain flexibility. If it’s giving up prospects or draft picks for an established NHL talent, the player needs to already have an extension in place or expected to be a short-term contributor.
The whole point in maintaining flexibility is to keep options open should an elite player become available. Similar to the strategy that teams use in the NBA where they tank, build up a young cost controlled core and then trade pieces for a superstar.
The whole point of tanking for four seasons wasn’t to have two chances at winning a Stanley Cup. The roster needs to be designed around the young talent in place so that interchangeable pieces can slide in around them until the secondary players click.
The Model
Think what the Capitals did with Alex Ovechkin, Nick Backstrom and John Carlson. The Pittsburgh Penguins with Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury. The Kings with Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter and Drew Doughty. The Bruins with Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Tukka Rask.
Getting the depth pieces around the stars is often overlooked in the scope of winning a championship. It takes an awful lot of good fortune to win a Stanley Cup. The better a team’s bottom six and third defensive pair are, the less responsibility falls on the team’s high end players.
Yes, if it comes down to it, it’ll be up to Panarin to be a game breaker in a clutch situation. The Lightning won the Stanley Cup last year because its high end players: Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy all showed up.
As the Lightning proved, it’s not just a matter of getting one or two elite players. When the team’s window of contention opened, its best players were Hedman, Steven Stamkos, Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat.
Over the course of a decade, the organization eventually developed two top sixes worth of forwards, traded first round picks for solid depth contributors and put together a certified juggernaut. It took five years from its 2015 cup appearance to finally win one, but make no mistake, Tampa is the goal.
Going forward
Just being blunt, the center position is a problem going forward. It’s not impossible to build a team around wingers, it’s just that centers do more. A high end center will cover more ice and touch the puck more than a winger in most cases.
The team will likely need to part with some of its prospects to acquire a legitimate number one center. Using Zibanejad as part of a larger package would make it a more palatable cost, but still leaves the team needing at least one more pivot.
Edmonton Oiler forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins headlines the free agent market this summer. He’d likely cost a bit too much for New York and a lot of his counting stats stem from power play time with Connor McDavid as well as Leon Draisaitl.
There are still significant questions going forward from a team building perspective. Barring a trade, there likely won’t be enough cap space to acquire another elite player via free agency. For better or worse, this collection of talent very well might be the organization’s best attempt at a contender.
That would be asking an awful lot of the team’s draft picks over the past four years. It’s not impossible, but it likely would not result in winning a Stanley Cup if it’s on Lafreniere and Kakko becoming elite players before the older players like Panarin, Trouba and Kreider regress.
The key for New York will not be jumping at the chance to have one deep playoff run. It’s about sustained success to give the organization multiple chances at winning a championship because it takes so many variables to go right.
