Rangers have an opportunity to strike early in trade market

The concept of the time value of money is a very common one in investing. Your money is worth a certain amount today but ideally grows over time. A similar philosophy applies in the NHL when it comes to cap space – $1 million at the start of the season can be worth around $4 million at the trade deadline, so teams wisely try to save what they have, hope for minimal injuries, and that would put them in a position to add a useful piece or two for the stretch run.

The end result of such a philosophy is a trade market that has basically resembled that of Major League Baseball since the start of December, notwithstanding a couple of minor AHL swaps last week.  (If you don’t follow MLB, it has been in a lockout since then with no trades allowed.)  For the most part, that’s probably not going to change over the next few weeks as many contenders have cap space ranging from none to minimal with a hope that between now and the deadline, it could improve to a level that could be considered as slightly better than nothing. Such is life in a league in which half the teams are technically over the cap and are using LTIR to get into compliance.

That provides an opportunity for a contender that’s fortunate to have cap space to make a move now to get a leg up on its competition. Only one such team in the top seven in the NHL standings heading into Monday’s games was in that situation and that’s the New York Rangers.

So far, they’ve been linked to many different players with former Ranger J.T. Miller being the headliner. Some of the others are on expiring contracts, and there needs to at least be a mixture as new contracts for Mika Zibanejad and Adam Fox add $11.725 million to next season’s payroll compared to what they’re making now. With nearly $71 million in commitments to 16 players per CapFriendly, there is some room for a longer-term addition, but some of their pickups will need to be rentals as well.

Right now, they’re pegged to finish the season with $7.056 million in cap space, an amount that’s equivalent to $17.2 million today and $35.2 million at the trade deadline. Yes, they have some bonuses to factor in, but the struggles of Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko limit that somewhat. Fox will reach his $850,000, but his bonuses should be the only ones of any sort of consequence. So if you’re working backward, the Rangers need to have at least $850,000 in room at the end of the season. Even if you add a few hundred thousand as a safety net for some of their other youngsters and factor in that they’re just carrying the minimum-sized roster due to the All-Star break, we’re looking at holding back only around 15% to 20% of their end-of-season cap room and a few million off the present value of contracts they can acquire right now.

That means the Blueshirts could add comfortably more than $10 million in salaries today to their roster. That’s enough to add an impact player up front and some depth in the bottom six, which is an area of concern for the Rangers at the moment with even perhaps having enough left over to shore up their back end. There’s a reasonable chance that will be about all of the spending they’re going to do between now and the deadline; no one should be expecting GM Chris Drury to bring in five or six new players between now and March 21st. That would be asking a lot of any team.

In that sense, there isn’t much of a need for them to wait. While many contenders will have to wait until more time elapses resulting in less salary to take on, the Rangers can go after their targets aggressively now. Waiting until closer to the deadline will bring in more contenders for their desired players which could drive the price tag higher. With that in mind, there’s a case to make that paying a little more now to get the player is worth doing, ensuring they get their targets and getting several weeks of extra games out of them in the process.

Patience is often a good characteristic, but for New York, the time may be right to be aggressive and strike early on the trade front. With their cap situation, the Rangers will be a team to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.