Rangers Looking To Make Another Forward Addition

It has been a fairly busy summer for the Rangers who have shaken things up in their forward group, their back end, and even between the pipes.  The end result has been six newcomers joining the team.

It appears that GM Chris Drury would like to add to that number.  Vincent Z. Mercogliano of The Athletic reports that the Rangers are still hoping to add another forward to their group before training camp gets underway in September.

In terms of newcomers up front, their biggest splash was the acquisition of Pavel Dorofeyev from Vegas along with the subsequent seven-year, $77MM contract.  They also added winger Oliver Bjorkstrand and center Joe Veleno in free agency.  Vincent Trocheck was traded to Utah (with promising center prospect Cole Beaudoin part of the return, though likely ticketed to start at AHL Hartford) while Adam Edstrom was traded to Nashville and Conor Sheary (Buffalo) and Jonny Brodzinski (Washington) moved on as free agents.

While there is certainly a spot to be upgraded in their current forward group, the challenge here for Drury will be affording that upgrade.  Per PuckPedia, the Rangers only have $2.4MM in cap space, an amount that isn’t likely to land someone of much consequence.  Additionally, they still have to re-sign defenseman Vincent Iorio with his salary cutting into their spending space if they intend to carry him on the NHL roster next season.  By the time the team leaves itself a bit of a wiggle room for early-season injuries and recalls, there isn’t much to go around.

Accordingly, it wouldn’t be surprising if Drury is targeting someone who is eligible for a bonus-based structure.  The current-year cap charge would be on the lower end and likely offsetable by removing the cap charge of the player he’d be replacing on the roster.  (Speculatively, a youngster like Jaroslav Chmelar could be a casualty due to his waiver exemption.)  While most, if not all, of the achieved bonuses would roll over to 2027-28, that would be a problem to deal with at that time.

The challenge here is that there aren’t many potentially impactful unrestricted free agent forwards who are eligible for bonuses.  The threshold is players aged 35 or older, or 400-game players who spent 100 or more days on IR last season.  For the latter category, Patrik Laine is the only option.  A vaunted goalscorer in the past, he played sparingly in Montreal when he was available but at a minimum, he could help a power play.  With his injury history, a one-year deal with incentives is his likeliest outcome.

Among the older forwards who could move the needle and receive a deal with incentives, former Ranger Patrick Kane stands out as the best option.  However, his base salary is still likely more than what New York can afford at the moment while they’re not on his shortlist by the looks of things.  David Perron is starting to slow down but is still a safe bet to score double-digit goals.  Adam Henrique and Reilly Smith are bottom-six pieces that would add a bit of extra depth to the lineup and whose base salaries could wind up being fairly low.

Granted, this is not exactly a particularly deep list but if Drury wants to look at free agency to try to help his team, this might be the pool he’s shopping in unless there are other cap-saving moves in the works first.  Given that deals for these types of players don’t typically come until closer to the start of training camp, the Rangers may be waiting for a while before they get a chance to add to their group.