New York Rangers: J.D. must get creative with Dolan’s money

Cleaning out the blue line

Defensemen Kevin Shattenkirk ($6.65M), Marc Staal ($5.7M), and Brendan Smith ($4.35M) all have two years left on their contracts. On a bang for the buck basis, all three need to go. This is where the Rangers can clear some cap space.

Trading those players at those salary levels, NYR would be lucky to get a bag of practice pucks in return for any of the three. Per the collective bargaining agreement, all three can’t be bought out. That doesn’t mean the Rangers can’t use some of their vast financial resources to make deals happen.

Using Shattenkirk as an example. Unfortunately, he never became the blue line Messiah NYR fans expected him to be. He’s only 30 years old and can surely help a team trying to win now. The Rangers could retain $5.5M of the balance of his contract ($2.75M per season). The new team would be paying only $3.6M per year for his services over the next two seasons. That’s a good deal for them and it avoids an over $6M cap hit the Rangers would have in 2020-21 if Shattenkirk was bought out.

They could do the same for Smith as well, retaining $4M, or maybe a little less, over two seasons. Staal, on the other hand, will be much harder to move as his game has been in a steady decline the past few seasons. The 32-year old most likely gets bought out. His cap hits over the next four seasons would be $2.9M, $3.7M, $1.2M, and $1.2M.

A cynic looks at the total and thinks that’s a good chunk of dead money, $7.6M in 2019-20, and $8.4M in 2020-2021. An optimist looks at the same thing and thinks, its a heck of a lot better than paying $16.7M a year for three players who underperform, and the money difference pays for someone who can help the team win going forward.