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Rangers agree to terms with Jacob Trouba
July 19, 2019, 4:05 PM ET [135 Comments]
Jan Levine
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The Rangers announced Friday they have agreed to terms with Jacob Trouba. Signing this deal avoids the July 25 arbitration hearing. The only player still to undergo an arb hearing, unless a deal is reached prior, is Pavel Buchnevich on July 29.







Details of the agreement came out shortly after the announcement of the deal and it's a whopper:







Year by year salaries:




Graphical representation:



Comparable contracts:



An advanced metrics look at the contract shows a $3.1 million profit:


This is what I wrote on July 5 as to potential contract for Trouba, so the $8 million is in line with expectations:

Trouba last season made $5.5 million as a Winnipeg Jet. One year away from unrestricted free agency, Trouba is likely to sign a long-term deal with New York. It’s possible he takes a one year deal at a mild raise with a handshake agreement to sign a long term deal in January in the expected $7.5-$8 million range. But doing so puts him at risk to losing that contract if he suffers an injury or if he plays well, he could want a bigger contract, impacting the Rangers.


I wrote similar on July 9:
If Trouba does opt a one-year handshake deal, sort of like what Henrik Lundqvist signed before he inked his long-term deal that following January, figure the contract will be in the $6.5 million range, saving New York about 1 million. To me, as I noted above, that happening is a long shot. I would prefer the two sides don’t make it to arbitration, avoiding the contentiousness that existed between Trouba and Winnipeg. A six- or seven-year deal in the $7.5-8 million range, eating up much of the Rangers’ available cap space, is the probable end result. Don’t be surprised if we see a deal made to free up cap room just before Trouba is signed if the longer dated contract is the end result.


As seen above and in the blogs, we had predicted seven years between $7.5-$8.5 million, so this is right in the middle of that range. A bit higher than I would have liked, as it was hoping that it would be towards the lower end of that spread and maybe even below that. But as we see, the market price for a top price d-man, depending on your view, is high, as evidenced by the contract. I also get overpaying your own player slightly, which might have been the case here. Yes, I do find it an overpayment, but just slight, unlike some of the other contracts the team dished out in the past, especially in free agency. In addition, I am not a fan of the NMC Clause from 20-21 to 23-24 or limited no-trade clause in years six and seven, but that may have been the way the deal was kept at $8 million and not beyond.




Rangers current cap situation:







Now New York needs to clear cap room, so expect a deal shortly. The Rangers can go 10% above the cap during the summer. But that means a contract or two have to go, either in buyout or by trade and the longer this goes, the harder it will be to move one and less the return received. This could mean Chris Kreider goes or a possible buyout of Marc Staal, Brendan Smith and Kevin Shattenkirk and/or a trade of Vladislav Namestnikov. The next two weeks or so until Buchnevich's arb hearing and buyout period ends will have us refreshing Twitter repeatedly to obtain the updated news. I believe that Rangers' secondary buyout window opens three days after Buchnevich is either signed prior to or post arb hearing and lasts two days. Stay tuned, I will be posting blogs as warranted.

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