Grab' & go
Rangers won’t give top winger an ultimatum at trade deadline
IN 2014, while the Rangers were in a typical scramble for a playoff spot, then-general manager Glen Sather put a full-court press on pending free agents Ryan Callahan and Dan Girardi to sign extensions by the trade deadline or face being sent out of town. Girardi signed. Callahan was traded.
The following season, Slats sent the same message to pending free agent Mats Zuccarello. The Norwegian signed.
But the informal policy Sather adopted late in the game hasn’t carried over to the Jeff Gorton regime. No promises, no threats. Two years ago, the GM allowed Keith Yandle to walk away — well, there was the trade of No. 93’s rights in late June for a pair of picks — instead of dealing the pending freeagent defenseman at the deadline.
And we can tell you there’s been no pressure applied on prime pending free agent Michael Grabner to sign on the dotted line before the Feb. 26 trade deadline or face exile. Slap Shots has learned Gorton has been in contact with No. 40’s agent, Jerry Buckley, but neither side perceives the trade deadline as an extension deadline.
“Jeff and I have had several conversations, but we haven’t gotten into negotiations,” Buckley told Slap Shots on Thursday. “I don’t have the sense that there’s urgency attached to this because of the deadline.
“There’s time between the end of the playoffs and [July 1] for us to talk and reach a deal. Michael loves New York and playing for the Rangers, and I have to believe the feeling is mutual. When the time is right, we’ll get down to negotiating.”
Grabner is entering the last few months of the two-year, $3.3 million free-agent contract he has outperformed by leaps and bounds in leading the club with 18 goals this season entering Saturday after recording 27 a year ago, second by one to Chris Kreider. He is among NHL leaders the past two seasons in five-on-five goals and even-strength goals (that counts empty-netters) while chasing his second straight Cy Young Award (18-3 this year, 27-13 last year).
It’s interesting. Neither Grabner himself nor the Rangers have created near the number of neutralzone turnovers that translated into odd-man rushes and breakaways last season, but the winger has shown better hands and finishing ability around the net. He is the kind of player whose twoyear, 17.9 shooting percentage on Broadway is sustainable. And he is as much a game-changer as anyone wearing the Blueshirt other than Henrik Lundqvist.
A few weeks ago, we mused that $10 million over three years might be enough to lock up the 30-year-old Austrian Express, who should age well because of his seemingly effortless stride. But it now seems more likely it will take something in the neighborhood of four years, $14 million to keep Grabner, who signed on for less last time in large part because of his familiarity with head coach Alain Vigneault and associate coach Scott Arniel, for whom he had played in Vancouver and AHL Manitoba, respectively.
But it seems as if the negotiating to be done will be done following the season, not during it. One deadline Feb. 26, not two. ➤ And for his greatest trick of all,
Garth Snow has turned three goaltenders into none.
The Islanders’ GM presides over a team that simply cannot keep the puck out of its net in surrendering 25 goals in losing their last five straight in regulation — two fours, one five and a pair of sixes — and the staggering sum of 78 goals (4.33 per) while going 5-11-2 since the beginning of December.
Of course, this is not just on the goaltenders — it never is — and perhaps moving Travis Hamonic for futures wasn’t quite so brainy, but
Jaro Halak and Thomas Greiss have conspired to allow four or more goals in 13 of the past 17 (six, six times!) and rank next to last in the NHL with a .8913 save percentage, .0002 better than Arizona.
And .8913 would have been lousy even back in the mid-’90s, when Snow was doing his Michelin Man act for the Flyers.
And, of course, this collapse/descent to the nether regions of the Metro Division again places a high alert on the John Tavares matter. For it’s no longer the arena issue, stupid, it’s the myriad issues on the team.
Maybe the owners know more than they’re not telling, maybe there’s somehow an agreement to agree in place that will be publicly unveiled for maximum effect — though no time like the present would seem to apply — at a later date.
But if not, I’d be a little bit nervous about this if I were Jon Ledecky or
Scott Malkin, and I might want to look at establishing Feb. 26 as a double deadline here, if you know what I mean. This is a player who simply cannot be permitted to walk for free when a bounty could be expected in return for his rental rights.
Once again: This is not Tampa Bay in 2016, where Steven Stamkos opted in late June to eschew the open market in order to remain on a club that had in successive years gone to the Cup final and to Game 7 of the conference final and, no small factor, was/is situated in a no-tax state.
➤ Lias Andersson would probably like to have the moment back — if not necessarily the silver medal — in which he tossed his second-place memento into the stands during the ceremony that followed his Team Sweden’s 3-1 defeat to Team Canada in Friday’s World Junior final. Time, place, decorum and all that. But that type of passion, that type of visceral reaction to losing, well, the Rangers can’t have too many of those type-A-players on a club that’s medium cool. It is another asset the 19-year-old, seventh-overall draft selection who captained Sweden will bring to New York when he is ready for the NHL.