D’ trimming
Rangers can’t keep all their defensemen
H ISTORY tells us that a team can never have too many NHL-caliber defensemen … unless, that is, having too many creates an unsustainable roster crunch.
That is the enviable/unenviable scenario confronting the Rangers, who have approximately 10 weeks to sort things out before the season opens.
The top four should be set with Ryan McDonagh and Brady Skjei on the left, and Kevin Shattenkirk and Brendan Smith on the right.
The top four should be more than set. It should be formidable.
But the personnel crunch hits on the third pair where there are currently five bona fide candidates — incumbents Marc Staal and Nick Holden, trade acquisition Anthony DeAngelo, and free-agent additions Alexei Bereglazov from the KHL and Neal Pionk — for two spots in the lineup and a third as the seventh defenseman.
Is it possible the Rangers could carry eight defensemen to start the season, especially because winger Jesper Fast will begin on injured reserve and the club likely is to carry one extra healthy forward? Yes, but that would provide only a temporary fix.
Clouding the issue is a believed contractual out-clause that would allow the 23-yearold Bereglazov to return to the KHL rather than accept an assignment to the AHL. The Rangers are unlikely to allow that to happen.
The Rangers likely acquired the 21-year-old DeAngelo from the Coyotes in the Derek Stepan deal in order to play him on the right side rather than have him sit around as a spare.
But the Blueshirts also believe that Pionk, the righty signed in May out of the University of Minnesota Duluth whowill turn 22 next week, is NHL-ready.
Thus, Pionk and DeAngelo presumably will be in direct competition for a spot, with the saving grace being that both are exempt from having to go through waivers.
It doesn’t seem possible for both Staal and Holden to retain their Blueshirts. The tandem crashed both collectively and individually in the second half of the season.
Staal, second in seniority on the club to Henrik Lundqvist, will have his immediate fate resolved by the end of the week when the Rangers’ second buyout window will close 48 hours following settlement of Mika Zibanejad’s pending arbitration hearing, scheduled for Tuesday.
It does not appear as if the Blueshirts intend to buy out the 30-year-old, who had a pretty good first half, but that is not set in stone. The club would clear approximately $3.57 million of 2017-18 cap space by doing so, while assuming the burden of carrying significant dead space for the next eight seasons
The Rangers probably would prefer to keep Staal through at least one more season and hope that good health would equate to a strong season.
So that leaves the 30-yearold Holden, who was an extremely pleasant first-half surprise after his acquisition from the Avalanche in exchange for a fourth-round pick and should be worth something on the trade market. But there appears to be a current glut of available defensemen.
Gorton is expected to revisit the potential buyout of Staal this week, but if No. 18 remains on the roster, the Blueshirts conceivably could go into camp with five defensemen competing for two spots in the lineup and three rosters slots and see where it goes from there.
Though it could be worse, and much worse, someone is going to have to go. Or maybe even two.