The Rangers have signed RFA Ryan Lindgren to a one-year deal worth $4.5 million. (Friedman)
Lindgren will be a UFA next summer. He had an arbitration hearing scheduled for later this week.
The Rangers were reportedly looking to sign Lindgren to a 2-3 year deal worth between $4 million and $4.25 million while Lindgren was looking for a 4-5 year deal worth closer to $5 million. (NY Post)
Lindgren just finished up a three-year contract that had a cap hit of $3 million per season.
Adam Rotter: I’m a little surprised that this is a one-year deal since it potentially walks Lindgren right into free agency, but avoiding arbitration is always a good move. A one-year deal also fits with the trend of keeping as much cap space available as possible for Igor Shesterkin, Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller but that group now also includes Lindgren.
There is no doubt that Lindgren is incredibly valuable for the Rangers and that there is always a noticeable drop in how the team plays when he isn’t out there, but there is a level of risk on a long-term deal for him with how banged up he always seems to be. I do think that the Rangers want to keep Lindgren, and they can extend him on Jan 1, but it’s understandable why they might want to go shorter team and not be locked into a long-term deal if Lindgren’s body starts to break down. Chris Drury wasn’t yet with the organization when it handed out a six-year extension to Dan Girardi, but he was part of the organization when the decision was made to buy Girardi out after three seasons and he was the GM for the last two seasons where Girardi’s dead cap hit was still with the Rangers. Glen Sather may have known at the time that Girardi’s contract wouldn’t age well and could be bought out, but the Rangers felt they were in a window to win and losing Girardi would have been a big blow. That is sort of the same situation as Lindgren. The Ranger are in a window to win and they will be a much worse team if they lose Lindgren after next season. Girardi was a few years older than Lindgren when he signed that deal, but there are so many parallels from them being paired with the best defenseman on the team to them seemingly being magnets for the puck to hit them. Both always played through injury but at some point it starts to limit how effective you are.
I also think it would be interesting to see what road they would have gone down with Lindgren if they had extended Shesterkin on July 1 and had cost certainty on his cap hit. Would that cost certainty have led to a long-term deal or is Chris Drury dug-in on a shorter-term deal because of Lindgren’s style and risk that comes with it? My guess is that Lindgren gets a long-term deal either in January or before he can become a free agent because the focus is on “now” and that Drury will deal with the later years of the contract when that time comes.