In a little under 11 months, the Rangers are set up to have a lot of breathing room when the next NHL free-agent market opens on July 1. If the books stay roughly as they are, New York projects to sit near $36 million in cap space, helped by the league’s ceiling jumping by $9.5 million to $113.5 million.
That number, though, only tells part of the story. Nearly $9 million is expected to come off the roster next summer when forwards Oliver Bjorkstrand, Taylor Raddysh, Joe Veleno and defenseman Urho Vaakanainen hit unrestricted free agency.
Bjorkstrand is the biggest name in that group, mainly because of his $4.5 million hit in 2026-27 and the top-six role he’s expected to handle this season. The other three, at least on paper, look like the kind of departures the Rangers can patch internally with the prospects they’ve been waiting to use.
The bigger squeeze comes from the players the Rangers will need to pay themselves. Several key restricted free agents are lined up for raises and new deals in 2027, and that will trim down the flexibility pretty quickly. And even if the Rangers do have money to spend, banking on July 1 to solve everything is a shaky plan.
The last cycle showed why. Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Kyle Connor, Kirill Kaprizov and Martin Necas were all supposed to be part of the 2026 UFA class, and none of them actually reached the open market.
They all stayed with their teams. Artemi Panarin ended up with the Los Angeles Kings after the Rangers traded the pending UFA in February.
Alex Tuch and Darren Raddysh, the top two remaining free agents, also never got to July 1; both signed with the teams that had acquired their rights before free agency opened.
That’s why counting on Jason Robertson next summer is not exactly a clean blueprint for Chris Drury and company, even if the three-time 40-goal scorer would fit the roster nicely. The odds of him actually making it to July 1 unsigned are slim.
So the real question is where the money goes if the Rangers do have that kind of space. A big chunk could be spoken for by their own young players, starting with Gabe Perreault and Will Cuylle.
Perreault is coming off his entry-level deal after 2026-27, while Cuylle finishes the two-year bridge contract that pays him $3.9 million per season. Perreault, the 2023 first-round pick, has a case to be the organization’s best homegrown forward prospect in a long time, and his strong finish to his rookie season in 2025-26 only adds to the expectation that he can become a top-six fixture for years.
The Rangers will have to decide whether a bridge deal makes the most sense for a player who is still growing into his game, or whether they want to lock him up longer and pay more now to avoid a messy negotiation later. With the cap climbing, teams carrying more cash, and the Leo Carlsson offer sheet still fresh in everyone’s mind, that question matters more than ever.
Perreault is not going to get an $18 million AAV offer from anybody - he can’t right? - but the Rangers would rather control the process with one of their most important young players than get backed into an expensive move they didn’t want to make. Of everything on the board next offseason, Perreault’s contract may be the most important one.
Cuylle is a different kind of case, but an important one all the same. He’ll be an RFA with arbitration rights, and his unrestricted free agency won’t arrive until 2029.
The Rangers like him, and the cleanest path would be to go long-term and buy out some of those UFA years. It would be a surprise if they treated Cuylle the same way they handled Braden Schneider this offseason.
Schneider, two years from UFA status, ended up on a one-year deal worth $5.5 million for this coming season. The Rangers clearly value Cuylle more than Schneider right now, and they appear more convinced Cuylle can be part of the core going forward.
Still, a deal won’t be automatic. If Cuylle puts up 20 goals for a third straight season in 2026-27, or if he wants top-six money while staying in a third-line role, the negotiations could get tricky.
Schneider himself remains another decision the Rangers will have to answer. By settling on a one-year contract this offseason, they pushed the long-term call down the road. He’s a strong third-pair defenseman, but the financial question hangs over him, especially if the Rangers view Scott Morrow and/or EJ Emery as right-shot defensemen of the future.
There are really three paths there: trade Schneider during next season or in the 2027 offseason, sign him long-term, or give him another one-year deal that would carry him to unrestricted free agency in 2028, which seems highly unlikely.
If the Rangers wind up extending Perreault, Cuylle and Schneider on longer-term deals, that would take a meaningful bite out of next summer’s flexibility. Even so, the cap is expected to keep rising, including another $8.5 million jump to $123 million in 2028-29.
Beyond that trio, the Rangers also have a cluster of other RFAs due next summer: Noah Laba, Tye Kartye, Matt Rempe, Jaroslav Chmelar and Adam Sykora on the forward side, plus defenseman Matthew Robertson. Kartye, Rempe and Juuso Parssinen also have arbitration rights, though it’s hard to imagine Parssinen still being around by then.
Those deals should be far simpler and cheaper than the ones for Perreault, Cuylle and Schneider. And with so many bottom-six and middle-six options in the system, not all of those players are likely to stay.
The Rangers have already moved on from Brennan Othmann, Brett Berard and Adam Edstrom in the past several months, and the same kind of turnover figures to continue. Which players are still standing will depend on what they do in 2026-27.
For all the planning ahead, the Rangers still need to keep their cap flexibility as a weapon. They already used it this offseason to land Pavel Dorofeyev, taking advantage of the Vegas Golden Knights being tight to the ceiling. New York traded for the 25-year-old sniper and then signed him to a seven-year, $77 million contract.
That was the kind of aggressive move a flexible team can make when the market itself isn’t especially inviting. And if the Rangers want to keep building a playoff-caliber roster, they’ll need to stay in position to do it again - whether that means free agency, offer sheets or trading for pricier stars.
In Other News...
Rangers Prospects Are Giving Fans A Reason To Feel Better
A fresh look at the Rangers farm system offers a more encouraging picture than fans have been used to seeing. NHL prospects expert Steven Ellis ranked New Yorks top 10 prospects heading into the 2026-27 season and saw a pipeline that has improved, even if it still lacks the kind of elite, cant-miss talent that changes a franchises outlook overnight. Still, the names near the top give the organization something to point to, with Alberts Smits, Liam Greentree, Malcolm Spence and Cole Beaudoin all drawing notice for different reasons.
Ellis broader read on the group is what should matter most to Rangers followers. He thinks roughly seven of these prospects could grow into NHL players over the next three to four years, which would be a meaningful step for a system that has spent too long looking thin. The big question now is less about whether help is coming and more about which of these young players can separate themselves enough to become real pieces in New York, not just bodies in the pipeline. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Winger Debate Just Exposed A Strange NHL Network Snub
Pavel Dorofeyev has quietly turned himself into one of the more intriguing winger stories in the league, backing up a breakout season with another 35-plus-goal campaign and adding meaningful playoff production along the way. For a player who is still building his national profile, that kind of consistency usually earns a spot in the conversation when people start stacking the NHLs best wings against one another, especially with younger names like Cutter Gauthier and Lucas Raymond in the mix.
Instead, the latest NHL Network list has only sharpened the debate around how these rankings are built and what theyre really meant to measure. Dorofeyevs numbers make a strong case that he belongs higher than the usual fringe candidates, and that is exactly why lists like this linger - they are less about settling a pecking order than about exposing where the arguments still are. [Read more 🡒]
Chris Drury Now Faces A Rangers Gamble He Has To Prove
The Rangers decision to move Artemi Panarin to the Kings and bring back Pavel Dorofeyev from Vegas was always going to be judged on one simple standard: whether the club could replace high-end wing production without taking a step backward. Panarin signed a two-year deal in Los Angeles, while Dorofeyev got the long-term commitment from New York, giving Chris Drury a reshaped depth chart and a clear bet that the incoming winger can help cover a major offensive loss.
The early external evaluation did not flatter the Rangers gamble. NHL Network placed Panarin among the leagues elite wings, while none of New Yorks current options, Dorofeyev included, cracked the top 20. For a team trying to stay in the mix, that gap turns this into more than a simple roster swap. It becomes a proof test for Drury, who is now asking a new face to help carry the kind of production Panarin once supplied. [Read more 🡒]