*Polite golf clap*
Has the team decided what they're going to do next season? Rebuild? Tank? Retool? AV staying or leaving?
If we were going to tank we would have done it a month ago and might be in the ECF by now.
AV stays. There was never any doubt about that, though it would be fair to say the honeymoon is now over. It was less certain that the assistant coaches would all return as AV wouldn't commit to them all being back after exit interviews (whether it was Ulfie taking the fall for season long defensive deficiencies or Scott Arniel taking the blame for less than stellar special teams), but it is looking now like the full coaching staff will be returning.
Pavel Buchnevich was an immediate priority for the team, one that even the players were excited about in their exit interviews. With his contract now in place, he'll be moving to New York to acclimate to the US and learn English starting June 15. Since Buchnevich will be fresh off the boat, the expectation is that the Rangers will also be bringing in another Russian to help ease the transition for him (Pavel Valentenko, of all people, is a name I've seen floated out there). This also makes re-signing Chris Kreider a priority, by the way, because he speaks Russian. So just in case any of you were getting any ideas of taking him off our hands, that's not going to be happening.
Otherwise, "retool" is probably the most accurate description, with the more specific mandates of "get younger" and "retool the bottom six." In this sense, losing Eric Staal, Dominic Moore, and Dan Boyle will effectively be addition by subtraction.
The Rangers are currently sitting on about $57m in salary, including Buchnevich, with the following players still to sign:
UFAs: Victor Stalberg, Keith Yandle
RFAs: Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes, JT Miller, Dylan McIlrath
Of those players (putting Yandle aside for now), only JT Miller is really in line for a big raise (he made 874k this season, and I can't see him getting less than 2 next), while Kreider, Stalberg, Hayes, and McIlrath should all get minor to medium-sized boosts, with Hayes being probably the biggest question mark. He'll probably want something like what Kreider was making this year ($2.475m) or what JT will be making next year, but he sure didn't earn it on the ice this season.
That leaves Yandle. There's actually maybe allllllmost enough space to sign Yandle and all the other free agents we care about, depending on who the Russian player we bring in is and what the final salary cap ends up being, but probably not quite. Which means if we're going to try to sign Yandle or, for that matter, sign a quality defenseman to take his place,
somebody is going to have to be moved. And we do have to sign somebody for that position, since if we lose Yandle we will have lost both of our theoretical power play quarterbacks in Yandle and Boyle. The obvious choices to move are, of course, Dan Girardi and Tanner Glass, but there are also obvious reasons why they might be difficult to jettison. Marc Staal would be your next option to move on D, but he'd be almost as difficult to move as Girardi. The asset you can probably get the best return for on the defensive side of things is Kevin Klein, but losing Klein would leave behind a shambles on the right side of the defense, even if we do think we can move Brady Skjei over there on McDonagh's right full time. The only other NHL ready natural right Ds who would be left if we ditched Klein would be Girardi and McIlrath, so unless we're getting like for like on a super favorable contract, moving Klein is probably a no go.
That doesn't leave too many other options for trades if the idea is to keep all of our young guys. In fact, the only one that jumps out to me as an option is Rick Nash, and he has a NTC on his contract that is probably still valid even though he's waived it once before.