The Rangers regular season will begin on October 3rd, as of this article the remaining two RFA’s, Tony DeAngelo and Brendan Lemieux have yet to be signed. With little to no information coming from the organization, there is only the assumption that both should be signed by the time the puck drops.
DeAngelo hold out?
Unless of course you find Tony DeAngelo liking a tweet that he won’t sign for under $1M which is his qualifying offer of $906,499. DeAngelo has since unliked the tweet but screen captures from reliable sources were sent to Forever Blueshirts.
While this is eyebrow raising, it isn’t definitive because DeAngelo does not have leverage without arbitration rights. The only play he could try is holding out, but that could backfire next summer. If DeAngelo misses too much time and he loses his spot in the lineup to another prospect, he will be at a serious disadvantage. The logical move would be to sign the one year deal, have another productive season and get at least a 2 year deal from the Rangers around $3M per.
Of course, there is still the possibility of a team giving DeAngelo an offer sheet. What about his childhood favorite team the Flyers or hometown Devils? Alain Vigneault did coach DeAngelo for 32 games in 2018 and the Rangers limited cap space make them ripe for one. If a team were to offer between 2-3M it would put Gordon in a bind because he only has about 3M to play with. And to make matters worse, the compensation would only be a 2nd round pick.
Shattenkirk expresses shock and anger over buyout
Kevin Shattenkirk spoke to reporters today after signing with the Lightning.
As we stated, and many other reporters did as well, a Shattenkirk buyout didn’t really makes sense financially or roster wise. Yes, the Rangers had too many right handed blue liners, but without Shattenkirk here you put enormous pressure on Adam Fox out of the gate.
It was also reported that 11 teams were interested in signing him, which prompted me to tweet out the following:
It should also be noted that Shattenkirk has a NMC in his contract which certainly narrowed the field of 11 down.
