- Rangers left-wing prospect Brennan Othmann was left off the opening night roster and will now be out of action for the next little while. He’s expected to miss four to six weeks with an upper-body injury, AHL Hartford head coach Grant Potulny said last night (as relayed by USA Today Sports’ Vince Z. Mercogliano). It’s an unfortunate damper on a raucous start for the 21-year-old, who had five points (2 G, 3 A) and a +2 rating through three minor-league games. The 2021 first-round pick made his NHL debut last season, going without a point and registering six shots while averaging 9:05 through three games.
Rangers Rumors
Rangers Reassign Jake Leschyshyn
Oct. 27: The Rangers assigned Leschyshyn back to Hartford on Sunday morning, the team announced. He didn’t play in last night’s 2-1 win over the Ducks, instead serving as a healthy scratch. He could continue to serve as an extra forward for the next little while but will likely only be summoned to the Rangers’ roster on game days, allowing them to accrue additional cap space while Leschyshyn is off the roster.
Oct. 26: The Rangers didn’t waste much time filling the roster spot created by Friday’s assignment of winger Matt Rempe to AHL Hartford. The team announced (Twitter link) that winger Jake Leschyshyn has been recalled from the Wolf Pack.
The 25-year-old was a full-time roster player for the better part of a year and a half between Vegas and New York, who claimed him off waivers in early 2023. However, he only got into one game with the Rangers last season, spending the rest of the year in Hartford where he had eight goals and 11 assists in 47 games. He has suited up five times for them this season, collecting three points so far. For his career, he has played in 77 NHL contests, notching two goals and four assists in 10:15 per game of playing time.
With a cap hit of just $766.7K, Leschyshyn actually costs less than the league minimum on the cap which will help them as they look to stay out of LTIR and continue to accrue cap space. He’s in the final year of his contract and will need to play at least three NHL games for him to be eligible for restricted free agency this summer. If that doesn’t happen, he can hit the open market next summer as a Group Six unrestricted free agent.
Vesey Returns To Practice
- Rangers winger Jimmy Vesey took part in the morning skate today in a non-contact jersey, relays Mollie Walker of the New York Post (Twitter link). The 31-year-old has yet to play this season due to an upper-body injury sustained in the preseason, landing him on LTIR in the process. Vesey was a capable depth scorer for New York last season, recording 13 goals and 13 assists in 80 games, the best offensive numbers he had since the final year of his first stint with the team back in 2018-19. Because of the LTIR placement, he has to miss 10 games and 24 days, meaning the earliest he can be activated is their November 3rd contest.
Rangers Sign Alexis Lafrenière To Seven-Year Extension
1:37 p.m.: Lafrenière’s deal has a front-loaded structure that includes an $8MM signing bonus when the deal goes into effect next season, Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports reports. He’ll have a no-movement and a modified no-trade clause go into effect when he’s eligible for it beginning in 2027-28, he adds. PuckPedia has the full breakdown of the deal, adding it’s an eight-team no-trade list for the modified NTC:
2025-26: $2MM base salary, $8MM signing bonus
2026-27: $5.5MM base, $2MM SB
2027-28: $8.5MM base, $1MM SB
2028-29: $7.15MM base
2029-30: $6MM base
2030-31: $6MM base
2031-32: $6MM base
12:42 p.m.: The deal will come in at an actual AAV of $7.45MM, per PuckPedia. That’s a total value of $52.15MM.
11:54 a.m.: The Rangers are closing in on a seven-year extension with winger Alexis Lafrenière worth just under $7.6MM per season, sources tell Larry Brooks of the New York Post. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said earlier Friday that talks between the Rangers and the pending RFA had “intensified.”
That means the deal’s total value will be in the $50-53MM range. It’s a contract that would have been inconceivable for the 2020 first-overall pick less than two years ago, a clear demonstration of how much he’s improved since the beginning of last season.
Trade rumors swirled around Lafrenière after his third season in New York. During that time, he’d failed to average over half a point per game at any stage – not an acceptable performance from a first-overall forward, even that early into their career. However, a coaching change brought Peter Laviolette behind the Rangers bench, who got Lafrenière more ice time by shifting him to right-wing after years of sticking on his natural left side.
In essence, he’s been stapled on a line with Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck, a pair with which he’s developed undeniable chemistry. Lafrenière played all 82 games in 2022-23, recording a career-high 28 goals and 29 assists for 57 points while averaging over 17 minutes per night. The trio formed the Rangers’ best two-way line last season that suited up together on a regular basis, controlling 55.6% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck.
The playoffs saw Lafrenière up his per-game production even further. While the President’s Trophy winners were bounced in the Eastern Conference Final by the eventual champion Panthers, Lafrenière tied Trocheck and Chris Kreider for the team lead in goals with eight and added six assists for 14 points in 16 games. He’s carried that momentum into 2024-25, lighting the lamp four times and adding three assists for seven points in seven games, still skating with Panarin and Trocheck and averaging nearly 18 minutes per game.
Lafrenière has now converted that production into a long-term commitment from the Blueshirts, who lock him up at an extremely affordable price through the 2031-32 campaign if he keeps up his recent offensive output. His deal will go into effect next season, keeping him from reaching restricted free agency for the second time in his career. The forward inked a two-year bridge deal worth a total of $4.65MM in August 2023, far less than what he’ll be making in a single season on his new contract.
He’ll be 30 when the deal expires – he turned 23 earlier this month. That allows him to cash in again on a long-term deal while being UFA eligible, although likely not as much as he could’ve garnered if he inked a five- or six-year extension with the Rangers. For New York, signing Lafrenière now likely provides a more affordable outcome than waiting until the end of the season, especially if he keeps up his point-per-game pace from the early going.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Rangers Reassign Chad Ruhwedel
Oct. 25: Ruhwedel cleared waivers today, per Friedman. He was assigned to Hartford shortly thereafter, per the team.
Oct. 24: The Rangers have placed defenseman Chad Ruhwedel on waivers for assignment to AHL Hartford, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports.
If Ruhwedel clears and is assigned to Hartford, it will be his first AHL action since the 2018-19 campaign. The 34-year-old has been on NHL rosters as a bottom-pairing/press box option for the better part of the last nine years, spending most of his professional career with the Penguins. Ruhwedel was initially an undrafted free agent signing out of UMass-Lowell by the Sabres in 2013 but spent most of his time with Buffalo in the minors before signing with the Pens in 2016.
Ruhwedel logged some AHL time with the Penguins, making 33 appearances for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton across a pair of seasons, but was otherwise an NHL fixture. A serviceable, physical right-shot defender, Ruhwedel posted 47 points and 90 PIMs with a -7 rating in 326 games for Pittsburgh, averaging 1.73 hits per game. But with the Pens slipping out of the playoff picture and his contract set to expire last summer, they traded him to the Rangers on deadline day for a 2027 fourth-round pick.
The San Diego native mostly sat in the press box down the stretch of the 2023-24 campaign. He logged five appearances for the Blueshirts, posting a -2 rating and 15 hits with one takeaway, averaging 14:08 per game. He didn’t suit up at all in the postseason.
While he was a UFA for nearly two weeks last summer, the Rangers brought Ruhwedel back on a one-year, two-way deal ($775K/$400K). He was expected to compete for a roster spot as a No. 7 defenseman, a pathway that became quite clear after Ryan Lindgren began the season on injured reserve. But with Lindgren back in the lineup and rookie Victor Mancini catching the team’s attention in a bottom-pairing role with three points in his last three games, Ruhwedel finds himself on the outside looking in.
Ruhwedel had played once in the Rangers’ six games to start the year, serving as a healthy scratch for the other five. He skated 14:04 against the Maple Leafs on Oct. 19, recording a +2 rating with four blocks and two hits.
Justin Barron Out Day-To-Day With Upper-Body Injury, No Supplemental Discipline For Jacob Trouba
After a blowout loss to the New York Rangers last night, the Montreal Canadiens are suffering an additional loss on their blue line. The team announced earlier that defenseman Justin Barron is considered day-to-day with an upper-body injury and is likely to be re-evaluated before the team’s next game against the St. Louis Blues.
Barron’s injury stems from a massive body check delivered by Rangers’ captain Jacob Trouba in the third period of last night’s contest which consequently ended Barron’s evening. The hit (Video Link) came with approximately 13 minutes remaining in the game with New York already holding a three-goal lead. Barron attempted to carry the puck into the offensive zone until he was immediately stopped in his tracks by Trouba.
It’s made clear in the video that Trouba came into contact with Barron’s head as a result of the hit which had a few members of the Canadiens’ organization seeking supplemental discipline for Trouba. Longtime veteran of Montreal, Brendan Gallagher, was publicly discomposed with the lack of penalty called on the play saying, “They had a clean hit on the ice, we have a hit to the head from a player that’s had multiple, multiple warnings. So, whether the league decides to do the right thing, whether he gets another pass, that’s up to them“.
ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski reported earlier that the league’s department of player safety won’t be issuing any supplemental discipline for Trouba. The league interpreted Barron’s chest as the main point of contact with the blow to the head being excused by Rule 48.1 of the NHL’s Official Rules which states: “whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not ’picked’ as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach, or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward“.
Rangers To Activate Ryan Lindgren From Injured Reserve
Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren will make his season debut tonight against the Canadiens, head coach Peter Laviolette told reporters, including Peter Baugh of The Athletic. He’ll need to be taken off injured reserve in the coming hours, but since he was already counting against the salary cap and the Rangers have an open spot on the 23-man roster, there’s no corresponding transaction necessary.
Lindgren won’t be entering the lineup in his usual top-pairing role, however. Laviolette added that he’ll pair Lindgren with rookie Victor Mancini, who’ll be playing in just his sixth career game tonight. The 2022 fifth-round pick out of Nebraska-Omaha was a surprise inclusion on the opening night roster after a strong training camp and has a goal, an assist and a +3 rating through five appearances this season. He’s averaged 15:03 per game, playing a third-pairing role alongside either Zachary Jones or Chad Ruhwedel.
It’s not entirely surprising to see Lindgren taken off his usual top-pairing home, even if it’s just temporary until he gets back up to speed. The 26-year-old is coming off a difficult season that saw him log the worst possession impacts of his career, posting a 47.8 CF% and 48.6 xGF%. Meanwhile, K’Andre Miller has flourished early on this year after being bumped up to first-pairing duties alongside Adam Fox. The two have controlled 71.3% of expected goals when deployed together, per MoneyPuck, and he’s got a goal and an assist to his name thus far.
Lindgren had been out with an upper-body injury he sustained in a preseason game against the Islanders nearly a month ago. It’s a delayed start to what will be an important season for the injury-prone defender, who narrowly avoided arbitration this summer with a one-year, $4.5MM agreement to walk him to unrestricted free agency next year. With Miller’s continued emergence and Lindgren’s declining defensive impacts, it’s unlikely he’ll be brought back if he can’t turn things around quickly.
While a 2016 second-round pick of the Bruins, Manhattan is the only NHL home Lindgren’s ever known. He was part of the return that sent Rick Nash to Boston at the 2018 trade deadline, and he’s since scored 10 goals and 70 assists for 80 points with a +99 rating in 333 games for the Blueshirts.
Alexis Lafrenière Out Day-To-Day With Upper-Body Injury
- Mollie Walker of the New York Post reported mild injury news for the New York Rangers sharing forward Alexis Lafrenière is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Lafrenière has been one of the team’s best forwards out of the gate with three goals and six points in five games while averaging 17:45 of ice time per night. With it being the last game of the team’s current three-game road trip, he may be on the shelf tomorrow against the Montreal Canadiens depending on the injury’s severity.
[SOURCE LINK]
How Do Recent Extensions Impact Igor Shesterkin’s Market?
Since October 1st, Boston Bruins’ Jeremy Swayman, Dallas Stars’ Jake Oettinger, Ottawa Senators’ Linus Ullmark, and Seattle Kraken’s Joey Daccord have all signed sizeable multi-year contracts with their respective teams. The ’white whale’ of them all, Igor Shesterkin, is looking to become the highest-paid goaltender of all time and it will be interesting to see the impacts of the recent deals on his market.
Shesterkin recently rejected an eight-year, $88MM contract offer from the New York Rangers and is reportedly seeking a higher salary than teammate Artemi Panarin’s $11.643MM AAV. It’s clear that he’s seeking a $96MM deal but could go as low as $94MM just to ensure he becomes the highest-paid member of the organization.
The recent comparables to Shesterkin are that of Swayman, Oettinger, and Ullmark’s contracts although many would argue he is in a league of his own. Each netminder signed for an $8.25MM salary with the first two garnering max term. There is a very reasonable argument that Shesterkin is better than each netminder listed but is he that much better to justify a nearly 50% raise on some of the better goaltenders in the league?
An eight-year contract for Shesterkin would take him to his age-37 season while the contracts given to Swayman and Oettinger will take them to 33 and 34, respectively. Shesterkin debuted in the 2019-20 season while Oettinger and Swayman debuted a year later. He leads the trio in wins, save percentage, and hardware while Swayman holds the lead in goals-against average.
He’s failed to backstop the Rangers to a Stanley Cup Final to this point but he has made two Conference Final appearances while the combination of Swayman and Oettinger have only reached one. His case for being the best goaltender in the game is a solid one but it’s going to be difficult for the Rangers to give him a $12MM salary despite the accomplishments. New York’s contention window begins and ends with Shesterkin between the pipes but they’ll still need financial flexibility to put complimentary pieces around him.
Shesterkin’s main argument, especially concerning Oettinger, is the ever-growing issue of income tax-free states. Doing some low-stakes math, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period asserted earlier that Oettinger’s take-home pay in Dallas, TX would be approximately $5.22MM after taxes while a $12MM salary for Shesterkin in New York City, NY would net him around $5.29MM. Factoring in the cost of living in New York compared to Dallas one could reasonably ascertain Shesterkin’s justification for his asking price.
At the end of the day, because Shesterkin is such a needle-mover between the pipes, one team will likely step up and give him $12MM a year on a max-term contract. There are few present concerns that the contract won’t be with the Rangers but the recent goaltender contracts may drive a further wedge between the two parties.
Anton Strålman To Retire
Longtime NHL defender Anton Strålman has retired, as noted by Robin Olausson of Hockey Sverige. Neither he nor the NHL Alumni Association have made an official announcement, but he’s now joined Swedish women’s soccer club Skultorps IF as a coach, Olausson said.
Strålman’s NHL career all but ended over a year ago. After managing to land a contract off a PTO with the Bruins in training camp in 2022, he failed to stick around at the NHL level, playing just eight games for Boston and spending a good chunk of the 2022-23 campaign in AHL Providence. A free agent last summer, he returned home to put a bookend on his career by suiting up for HV71 of the Swedish Hockey League, where he had 16 points (2 G, 14 A), 10 PIMs, and a -12 rating in 48 games. He added an assist and a +3 rating in their relegation series against IK Oskarshamn to help them stay at the top level of the Swedish pyramid.
The 38-year-old was once one of the more underrated two-way defenders in the NHL. Drafted 216th overall by the Maple Leafs in 2005, Strålman broke into the NHL three years later. After a pair of seasons covering depth bottom-pairing duties for Toronto, he was traded to the Flames and then flipped again to the Blue Jackets in the 2009 offseason.
The move to Columbus is what truly jumpstarted his career. Strålman’s first season in Ohio saw him average over 20 minutes per game and break out for 34 points in 73 contests. He’d regress to a goal and 18 points in 51 games the following year, though, marking the end of his brief stint with the Jackets. He was non-tendered and became a UFA in 2011 at the age of 24, and he needed to wait until after the 2011-12 campaign started to catch on with his next NHL team – the Rangers.
In New York, Strålman’s game never popped offensively, but he did do well to establish himself as a reliable defensive presence who could shoulder second-pairing minutes. He averaged 18:22 per game in the Big Apple with solid possession metrics, posting a 54.3 CF% in front of expert goaltending from Henrik Lundqvist to lead to a cumulative +32 rating in 182 appearances for the Rangers, adding seven goals and 31 assists for 38 points.
That showing boosted his market value significantly heading into free agency in 2014, landing a five-year, $22.5MM deal with the Lightning that stands as the most lucrative contract of his career. His play popped accordingly in Tampa Bay, immediately making an impact with a career-high 30 assists and 39 points in 82 games before the Bolts marched their way to the Stanley Cup Final. Strålman maintained a high level of play in Tampa, averaging around 30 points per 82 games and logging nearly 22 minutes per game, with a cumulative +80 rating across his five-year deal.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t a part of their three straight Stanley Cup Final runs from 2020 to 2022. He priced himself out of Tampa upon reaching free agency again in 2019, instead inking a three-year, $16.5MM contract with the intrastate rival Panthers. That marked the beginning of the end of his NHL career, and by Year 2 of the contract, he’d fallen out of a top-four role. He had nine points in 38 games for Florida in 2020-21, leading them to surrender a second-round pick to dump the final year of his deal at a $5.5MM cap hit on the Coyotes.
Strålman did have a brief resurgence on a thin Arizona blue line, rebounding for 23 points in 74 games in 2021-22 while averaging 21:20 per game. It was his best offensive total in five years, and his highest usage in four, but his once-sparking possession metrics continued to dip below average. He needed the aforementioned PTO with Boston to keep his NHL career alive the following year before heading home in 2023.
All told, Strålman finishes his NHL career with 63 goals, 230 assists, 293 points, a +46 rating, and a 51.3 CF% in 938 appearances while averaging nearly 20 minutes per game. He made the Stanley Cup Final in back-to-back years with the Rangers and Lightning and totaled 26 points and a -4 rating in 113 playoff games. PHR wishes Strålman the best in the next phase of his career.