Rangers and Artemi Panarin on different wavelengths over contract terms
The Athletic’s Vince Mercogliano joined Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick and was asked about Artemi Panarin’s contract situation with the New York Rangers.
Transcribed by NHLRumors.com
Scott Laughlin: Vince Mercogliano talks to us about the Rangers on NHL Morning Skate. So you mentioned Panarin and how he still runs the offense up front. Lately people seem to be talking more about his haircut than his contract extension. Vince, what do you think of Panarin? Now, he is 34 years old. My guess is that because he is 34 years old, there may be different opinions on the content of the terms in this contract. Do you think this will be done at some point?
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Vince Mercogliano: Yeah, from what I understand, I think terminology is definitely going to be an issue. In fact, I actually asked Panarin himself, and frankly, we were talking about the day he shaved his head. I sat down and did some interviews with him after practice that day, when he was in his slump. I kind of wanted to ask him what happened. He spontaneously suggested that there was a lot going on.
When I didn’t score, the negativity started to seep in. He brought up that this was a contract year and it was hard to get that out of my mind. So that prompted me to answer, how are the contract negotiations going now?
What he told me was that it was mostly quiet here. Now, will things change over the past few weeks? It’s possible, but I’ve certainly heard nothing to the contrary. My understanding is that in terms of the Rangers thinking about it, they’re in no rush to reach any new deal with Panarin at this point.
When you mention age, I think they’re very interested in seeing how this season goes and how efficient he is, but they’re also looking at a very unique situation compared to recent offseasons. In the past, in the recent past, they’ve typically gone into the summer very tight on salary cap space.
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They are expected to have more than $30 million in available cap space this summer. So I think they’re looking forward to having that flexibility and they don’t want to tie up a lot of capital early in the process. They want to wait and see how the market plays out.
Now, the downside to them, or the downside to them right now, is a lot of the big-name players, star-level players, (Connor) McDavid, (Kirill) Kaprizov, (Jack) Eichel, whoever you want to say they want to be free agents next summer, a lot of them are locked up right now, so the free agent market is looking thinner and thinner, really, week by week, it feels like it’s been lately.
So that’s not a good thing for the Rangers because they’re going to have all this cap space. But there’s a question of what they’re going to spend the money on, and if it starts to feel like, to me more like (Chris) Drury, has to get creative in some way, that could mean a trade. Who knows what will happen come summer?
But again, I think they want to wait and let things crystallize and figure out what they might be able to get, which is why they don’t want to do any extensions with Panarin right now because they might want to allocate that money elsewhere. I think they’re very keen to keep their options open right now.
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While it sounds to me like Panarin wants to stay, I also don’t think he’s going to give a huge discount right now, or certainly not any fewer years than he wants. So I also think there’s a stalemate right now because if the Rangers do anything with him at this early juncture, I think it’s going to largely have to be on their terms, which means probably not as many years and a lower AAV, certainly lower than the $11.6 million per season he’s getting now.
So I feel like both sides are looking at things very differently now and Rangers are content to wait and see how things play out.
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