Navigating the salary cap is one of the most important tasks for a front office. Teams that can avoid total cap chaos by walking the tightrope of inking players to deals that match their value (or compensate for future value without breaking the bank) remain successful. Those who don’t often see struggles and front office changes.
PHR will look at every NHL team and give a thorough look at their cap situation for the 2025-26 season. This will focus more on players who are regulars on the roster versus those who may find themselves shuttling between the AHL and NHL. All cap figures are courtesy of PuckPedia. We’re currently covering the Metropolitan Division, next up are the Rangers.
New York Rangers
Current Cap Hit: $94,722,024 (below the $95.5MM Upper Limit)
Entry-Level Contracts
D Scott Morrow (one year, $916.7K)
Potential Bonuses
Morrow: $350K
Morrow was part of the return for K’Andre Miller earlier this summer and he will look to establish himself as a full-time NHL player with his new team after playing sparingly with the Hurricanes. Unless he can become a regular inside the top four, it’s unlikely his bonuses will be reached. A bridge deal is likely down the road with a good showing this season potentially pushing that price past the $2MM mark.
Signed Through 2025-26, Non-Entry-Level
F Jonny Brodzinski ($787.5K, UFA)
F Artemi Panarin ($11.643MM, UFA)
G Jonathan Quick ($1.55MM, UFA)
D Braden Schneider ($2.2MM, RFA)
D Carson Soucy ($3.25MM, UFA)
Potential Bonuses
Quick: $300K
Panarin’s pending free agency is shaping up to be one of the more intriguing ones. Signed to a record-setting deal the last time he hit the open market back in 2019, that won’t be the case next summer but he should still have strong value. Panarin has produced more than a point per game in each of his six seasons with the Rangers, while he’s fourth among all NHL players in points over that stretch, behind Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Nathan MacKinnon. Pretty good company to be in. However, he’ll also be 34 and nearly 35 when his next contract starts so his best days will soon be behind him. A more medium-term agreement (three or four years) makes sense here and it’s possible such an agreement could land around the $10MM mark per season.
Brodzinski has done well the last couple of years, establishing himself as a back-of-the-roster player with a bit of offensive skill as he’s coming off a double-digit goal season. Capable of playing center and the wing, he’s the type of lower-cost role player that could get a bit more interest next summer, giving him a chance to push past the $1MM mark for the first time in his career.
Soucy was acquired near the trade deadline in a move GM Chris Drury might already be regretting as he played limited minutes down the stretch. He’s pricey for a sixth defender, especially with the team being tight to the Upper Limit. That said, Soucy might still land close to this amount on the open market next summer. Schneider had a solid first season of his bridge contract while locking down a top-four role for the first time. He’s someone they’d probably like to sign to a longer-term deal next time out but that might run them closer to $6MM. If they can’t afford that, then a one-year pact closer to $4MM might be the short-term fix.
Quick is back for his third season with the Rangers on his third one-year deal, an agreement that keeps going up in price each year. His base salary isn’t likely to go too much higher, at least with New York as they look to keep the second-string spot affordable. His bonuses are games played and performance-based but none of them are freebies; he’ll have to play with some regularity and perform well to get some of them.
Signed Through 2026-27
F Sam Carrick ($1MM, UFA)
F William Cuylle ($3.9MM, RFA)
F Justin Dowling ($775K, UFA)
F Adam Edstrom ($975K, RFA)
F Juuso Parssinen ($1.25MM, RFA)
F Taylor Raddysh ($1.5MM, UFA)
F Matt Rempe ($975K, RFA)
D Urho Vaakanainen ($1.55MM, UFA)
With the Rangers concerned about a possible offer sheet for Cuylle, they were able to get this done quickly enough to avoid the chance of that happening. It’s on the higher end for a player who only has 66 career points under his belt but power forwards get paid early and often and this deal should hold up fine. A long-term pact with arbitration rights next time out could come close to doubling this cost. Raddysh came over in free agency from Washington where he managed a respectable 27 points in largely a limited role. He’s not that far removed from a 20-goal campaign back with Chicago either but he’s likely to fill a regular spot in the bottom six. Unless he can get back to that offensive form he briefly showed with the Blackhawks, Raddysh is likely to remain in this price range.
Parssinen’s stock has dropped after a season that saw him slide down the depth chart in Nashville and Colorado before being moved to the Rangers at the trade deadline where he still didn’t reach 10 minutes a night of playing time. On the other hand, he’s still just 24 and has some room to stabilize. He’ll be owed a $1.3MM qualifying offer with arbitration rights so he’ll need to show he can lock down a full-time role over the next two years or become a potential non-tender candidate as New York will want to keep its back-of-roster spots cheap. Carrick was a low-cost add in free agency last summer and fared pretty well in a depth role, picking up 20 points and winning over 54% of his faceoffs. If he can do that for two more years, he could set himself up for a jump closer to the $1.75MM mark.
Edstrom and Rempe both had brief stints with Hartford last season in between seeing largely fourth-line minutes with the Rangers, making bridge deals the obvious way to go. They received identical contracts that buy the team more time to assess how much upside there still is. If they progress, something in the $1.5MM after arbitration rights could be doable. Dowling comes over from New Jersey after playing in a career-high 52 NHL games last season. He’s someone whose roster spot could be a little tenuous while history has shown that he’s likely to stay at the minimum salary moving forward.
Vaakanainen came over from Anaheim as part of the Jacob Trouba trade and got an opportunity to play largely a regular role upon returning from an injury. The 2017 first-round pick has been more of a depth player throughout his career but had arbitration rights which was enough to land him a small raise to avoid the risk of going to a hearing. He’ll need to show he can be more than a depth option if he wants to get more than this moving forward.
Signed Through 2027-28
None
Signed Through 2028-29
D Adam Fox ($9.5MM, UFA)
F Vincent Trocheck ($5.625MM, UFA)
Trocheck has turned into a nice bargain for a second center. While he wasn’t able to match his career-best point output from 2023-24 last season, he was still fourth on the team in scoring while bringing a solid defensive game and high-end faceoff skills to the table. If he would have been unrestricted this summer, he likely would landed at least a couple million more per season.
Fox wasn’t able to surpass the 70-point mark for the fourth straight year last season but he still finished in the top ten league-wide for points by a defenseman. He’s third overall for points by a blueliner in the last half-decade and considering he’ll only be 31 when this deal expires, he’s in a good spot to earn a max-term contract with a price tag that should land closer to the $12MM mark if he’s still in top form by then.
Signed Through 2029-30 Or Longer
D William Borgen ($4.1MM through 2029-30)
D Vladislav Gavrikov ($7MM through 2031-32)
F Alexis Lafreniere ($7.45MM through 2031-32)
F J.T. Miller ($8MM through 2029-30)
G Igor Shesterkin ($11.5MM through 2032-33)
F Mika Zibanejad ($8.5MM through 2029-30)
Zibanejad’s contract was always going to carry some risk in the back half but it has held up relatively well in the first three seasons of it as he’s amassed 225 points. As long as he can play at a top-six level, they’ll at least get reasonable value but those final few seasons remain likely to be an issue. Miller was brought in for a second stint with the Rangers in a midseason trade with Vancouver. A lot of what was just written about Zibanejad also applies here although Miller has been over a point per game in three of the last four years with the one miss coming last season when he almost got there. All else being equal, his deal might provide a better return for a little longer than Zibanejad’s.
Early last season, Lafreniere got off to a solid start, averaging a point per game over the first few weeks, suggesting he had turned the corner in his development. That was enough to get this early extension worked out. However, he managed just 38 points in 75 games after the contract, a 41-point pace over a full season. That type of production for $7.45MM isn’t what they’re expecting or paying him for. It will be interesting to see how he fares under new head coach Mike Sullivan. If Sullivan can help him take that next step, this contract should hold up just fine or even become a bargain if the offense really takes off. But if he stays in that 40-50-point range, it could become a problem fairly quickly.
Gavrikov was their big addition this summer, giving them a legitimate top-half defender (who effectively replaces the Miller moved in the trade with Carolina). Considering the dearth of quality options available, it’s fair to suggest he left money on the table to join New York. He won’t produce enough to make the contract a bargain but this one should hold up just fine. Borgen’s, on the other hand, looks like an above-market deal before he has even played a game on it. For a player who is best off as a fifth option, the term and dollars are both high. Granted, he very well could have come close to this in free agency with the state of the defensive market but that doesn’t make it a good deal for New York.
Shesterkin wanted to set the new benchmark for goalies and while it took trading Trouba to create enough space in the league’s Projected Off-Season Cap Accounting formula to do it, they eventually got it across the finish line. Given the record-breaking nature of the contract, it’s never going to be a true bargain and if he’s not elite in any given year, it’ll be a drag on their books. But he’s considered one of the best in the game for a reason and New York has him locked up for the long haul; it’s a bet they were certainly comfortable with making.
Still To Sign
Neither netminder has played at the NHL level yet though Garand sits third on the depth chart. Both players will likely be heading for low-cost two-way deals.
Buyouts
None
Retained Salary Transactions
None
Carryover Bonus Overage Penalty
None
Best Value: (non-entry-level) Trocheck
Worst Value: Borgen
Looking Ahead
Drury has been rather aggressive with shaking up his roster, dealing away several core players in the last eight months to open up enough flexibility to make some other moves. The end result is a different group and time will show if it’s a better one. Looking at things strictly from a cap perspective, not a whole lot has changed. They’re still very tight to the Upper Limit and only Morrow is waiver-exempt so papering him down (the new rule for that doesn’t start this season) won’t open up a lot of extra flexibility. As soon as an injury hits, they’ll be a money-in, money-out team in 2025-26.
Drury should have more options next summer when his cap space jumps up to nearly $30MM. Of course, there’s a big-ticket contract in Panarin’s to contend with while Schneider will be eyeing a big raise as well. Those two will take up more than half of that space but after that, there will be more wiggle room to work with. They won’t necessarily get as much of a jump the following summer with Cuylle needing a pricey new contract and a lot of other roster spots to fill but the Rangers should still be in a more favorable cap situation then compared to now.
Photos courtesy of Wendell Cruz and Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images.