Rising contract prices around the NHL are making life harder for teams that need elite defensemen, and the New York Rangers have one sitting right in the middle of their future in Adam Fox.
Cale Makar’s new deal set the market in a way nobody had ever seen before, making him the first player in NHL history to land an annual salary north of $20 million. Zeev Buium followed with an eight-year extension carrying a $9.38 million annual salary after being dealt to the Vancouver Canucks last December in the Quinn Hughes trade. Those numbers send the same message to every front office: if you’ve got a true top defenseman, the bill is only going up.
For the Rangers, that puts Fox back in the spotlight. He remains their clear No. 1 on the blue line, even if his reputation has taken a hit over the last two years.
And at $9.5 million per season for the next three years, he’s still a bargain by the standards of what the league is turning into. But the broader issue isn’t just cost.
It’s whether the Rangers can keep the team moving in the right direction before Fox starts wondering about something else.
That question already surfaced last season.
The Rangers entered the year with big expectations after hiring Mike Sullivan away from the Pittsburgh Penguins, a move they had been chasing for years. Instead of taking a step forward, they crashed to last place in the Eastern Conference.
Injuries to key players like Fox, underwhelming play from top names such as J.T. Miller, and the tea having anything but home ice advantage all fed into the collapse.
Then came January, when the injuries stacked up and both Fox and Igor Shesterkin were sidelined. At that point, general manager Chris Drury sent a letter to the league saying the Rangers were giving up on a playoff push and shifting toward a retool. That opened the door for top players to be moved in exchange for younger, pro-ready talent.
When Fox came back after the letter had already been sent to fans, he was asked whether he could see himself as part of the Rangers’ future. His answer did not calm anyone down.
"I'm just trying to focus on this year right now," said Fox after a Feb. 26 game. "That's a conversation when we're done playing games.
We're just trying to win games, we didn't do that tonight. That's where my focus is right now"
For a fanbase already watching the season sink, that was the kind of response that makes everyone start connecting dots. Was Fox about to become part of Drury’s retool? Did he even want to stay?
There were at least a few encouraging signs before the season ended. Younger players such as Gabe Perreault, Adam Sykora, Jaroslav Chmelar, Drew Fortescue, and Dylan Garand all showed well down the stretch and helped the Rangers pick up some wins. After the regular season, Fox sounded more settled about where things stood.
“For me, it was just, we’re still in a unique situation,” Fox told The Athletic. “Not many people have been through a retool letter and kind of what that means, so I think that’s kind of where the figuring out stuff was from.
It was never really about belief in the guys. It was just kind of direction and where it’s going.
I think that’s where I was at. But obviously there’s been some promising signs of the possibilities of the kind of team we can be.”
Drury spent the offseason trying to make sure that future looked better. The biggest swings came through trades.
He sent multiple first-round picks to the Vegas Golden Knights for winger Pavel Dorofeyev and then gave Dorofeyev a seven-year, $77 million extension. He also dealt a future first-rounder for defenseman Marcus Pettersson, bringing him back together with Sullivan.
Another major move brought in defenseman Sean Durzi and center prospect Cole Beaudoin from the Utah Mammoth in exchange for Vincent Trocheck.
The Rangers also added wingers Oliver Bjorkstrand and Eeli Tolvanen, along with center Joe Veleno, giving the roster a very different look heading into training camp. On paper, it’s enough to suggest a team that should be better than last season’s disaster and at least have a shot at getting back into the playoff picture. The catch is obvious: they spent draft capital to retool instead of rebuild, so the results need to show up.
That matters because the league has already seen star players force their way toward the exits. Brady Tkachuk, despite basically brushing off the trade noise around him, ended up forcing his way from the Ottawa Senators to join his older brother Matthew on the Florida Panthers.
Connor Hellebuyck has also put his desire to leave the Winnipeg Jets into a public statement. And then there’s Dylan Larkin, whose situation in Detroit has turned into a full-blown holding pattern.
In June, reports said Larkin had asked out of the Red Wings after their playoff drought stretched to 10 seasons and his relationship with general manager Steve Yzerman deteriorated. Those same reports said he would only want to go to the Vegas Golden Knights, Minnesota Wild, or Panthers.
Then Yzerman stepped down as general manager. With training camp nearing, Detroit still doesn’t have a head of hockey operations, and Larkin has not spoken publicly about the request.
That is exactly the kind of mess the Rangers need to avoid with Fox.
He is their best defenseman, their power play quarterback, and a player they simply cannot replace right now. The hope is that first-round pick Alberts Smits can eventually grow into that kind of role, but that’s going to take time.
For the Rangers, the math is simple: they are better with Fox than without him. Now they have to prove this season can go somewhere before the situation turns into something much uglier.
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Drew Fortescues first season as a pro comes with a clear path, but not much room to shortcut it. After three years at Boston College, the young defenseman is set to join the Hartford Wolf Pack and try to carve out a bigger role right away, giving the Rangers a closer look at how his game translates against older, more experienced competition in the AHL.
The harder part is figuring out where the ceiling sits this year. New Yorks NHL blue line looks largely settled after recent trades and signings, which leaves Fortescue with a long shot at regular minutes in Manhattan and a real battle in Hartford instead, where hell have to earn ice time over established AHL defenders while waiting for an opening that may never come without help from injuries above him. [Read more 🡒]