By any objective measure, the $7 million over two years Derek Stepan is attemp✨ting to ♛get from the Rangers is below market value.
The problem for Stepan is that as a Group II free agent with🐓out arbitration rights, he belongs to the only class of NHL players that essentially is excluded from the market 🎀and that operates without comparables against which to measure.
Compounding the problem is that as a Range🏅r, Stepan belongs to one of the few teams in the NHL that uses the leverage it owns under the collective bargaining agreement when negotiating with these Group II’s.
So Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ seven-year, $42M extension with Edmonton — with still one season remaining on his Entry Level deal — may as well not exist as it applies to Stepan’s case, just the way all those similar previous second contract extensions given to people such as Jeff Skinner, ౠTyler Seguin and Taylor Ha⭕ll may as well not exist.
And so here we are, closer to the Oct. 3 start of the season in Phoenix than the Sept. 11 start of training camp without an end in sight to the impasse between Stepan and the Rangers, who have offered their presumptive first-line center just under $6M for two seasons and are believed willing to go to🧸 approximately $6.4M in order to get the deal done.
By the way, “holdout” is such a pejorative term. Stepan simply doesn’t have a contrac♉t. If he is “holding out” for a better offer, so too are the Rangers.
Absent an offer sheet that does not appear forthcoming, all of the negotiating leverage is on the side of the team. That’s the way the CBA intends it. If Stepan does not sign by Dec. 1, he is ineligible to play this season, per the CB🦩A. Time isn’t necessarily on his side.
Furthermore, if the dispute bleeds into the season, it could have an impact on Stepan’s candidacy for the U.S. Olympic team, and don’t for a moment think that both the🐟 athlete and Rangers’ general manager Glen Sather aren’t aware of that clock ticking.
(It’s not quite 1997-98, when Devils’ GM Lou Lamoriello swung the Olympic hammer to pound Billy G𝔉uerin into negotiating submission after the winger missed the season’s first 21 games, but Team USA is there all right, as, Alex Rodriguez might say, the elephant in the room.)
So Stepan is in a corner. But the problem isn’t his alone, not by a long shot. Because if it seems counter-intuitive for a 23-year-old to risk missing a chunk of the season and a shot at the Olympics over $600,000 fo♎r two years,📖 it seems even more absurd for the Rangers to draw a line in the sand with one of their most important players over the same amount of money.
True, true, it’s every bit as much about cap space as it is about money — or so Stepan and his representatives have been told — but the Rangers created the issue by saving this one for la🃏st while addressing other matters, and, as long as we’re dealing in truths, Sather does have slightly more maneuverability than he suggests.
Stepan isn’t just some spare part. He has been the Rangers’ best center each of the last two seasons and led the team in scoring a year ago. He has not missed a game in his three-year NHL career, playing 212 straight in the regular-season and 37 more in the playoffs. He leads Rangers forwards in ice time over the past three seasons, while ranked 30th in the NHL in that category. He i❀s an inte𒈔gral part of the power-play and penalty-kill units.
He’s missing Alain Vigneault’s firs๊t training camp in which the coach is teaching his system and communicating his particular world view. Over a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year.
Make no mistake, Stepan is directing his agents, not taking orders from them. Management sho🥂uldn’t believe otherwise. He already has made a significant concession by accepting the concept of a two-year bridge deal rather than insisting on a long-term contract that the Skinners of the league have received.
It is likely Stepan will have to compromise a bit more in order to 🍒get this done. But the Rangers are going to have to be willing to compromise, too, and come closer to the asking price of $3.5M per than they have been willing.
If they don’t, S💃tepan will have a serious problem. But then, so will the Rangers. It’s lose-lose. The team neeꩲds him every bit as much as he needs the team.
Leverage is one thing. Losing games in a stubborn attempt to exercise it is something else altogether. The gap isn’t that sign🍬ificant. It’s time to get this done.