On a cheap deal they should take a shot. They are thin at center. Hanzal wants a good contract. Unless they want to be tied up for 4-6 years with him....I'm watching this season for a cup, not to develop the next fuckin grinder
Yeah, not interested in Thornton unless he took a crazy low deal just to keep playing. Here is my bottom line, we have 23 mill of cap space now and a few holes to fill. Gorton will be doing a lot of work over the next 2 weeks to complete this team. I have faith in him to get a C, a dman to pair with McDonagh, and maybe even a 4th line faceoff C and a 2nd pair dman to play with Skjei as well. He will get good stuff done, and that is why I like this trade today even more. In a capped league we simply could not allow Stepan to be here with a 6.5 AAV under a NTC for 2 or 3 years...no way. The value was not there in that contract, so we had to move him. And Zona wanted the one more year we'd have Raanta for as a kicker, so be it. For that we get the # 7 pick, a dman who can QB the PP and is a R shot with great skating ability, AND we got great cap flexibility...which simply cannot be undervalued here. If you told me Gorton was done, then yeah I'd have concerns, but I have zero doubt we will see a handful of moves to complete the team in the near future.
For a backup maybe they look at Pavelec or Chad J again. I like the idea of maybe adding Dwight King. I would try and keep Miller at W but who knows.
when was the last time the Rangers had two first round draft picks? Wake me up, I am dreaming. Stepan must be considered as one of the better draft picks in their history. I know he did not do much in the playoffs and was bad on face-offs but the guy was a 50 point guy pretty much all of his career here.
Stepan was a consistent scorer but one of the worst faceoff men in the NHL, great trade getting rid of Derek. The only way I would have kept him is if he moved to RW and shot more. I agree with moving Miller to C and think Graves easily makes the team on his shot alone. I want Smith resigned over Shat and am greedy enough to want Staal gone too. It's refreshing to see a GM who recognizes weaknesses and addresses them rather than standing pat. UFA centers to consider - Sam Gagner, Brian Boyle, Nick Bonino, Daniel Winnik