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Justin Falk, the restricted free agent defenseman who the New York Rangers just acquired in a trade on June 30 from the Minnesota Wild, has signed a one-year deal with the club worth $975,000.
It’s a pretty fair deal, I would say, since Falk will either be on the last defensive pair or a healthy scratch.
Now with the Rangers only having a little over $3,33 million left to spend with the salary cap and with the organization announcing today that they have also extended forward Carl Hagelin, there is now Derek Stepan and Mats Zuccarello to get under contract for this upcoming season.
Now while $3,330,833 may seem like a lot of money to us fans, it is not a whole lot of money to spend in the sports world.
What you can expect to happen is one of two things. Either the Rangers will make a trade that would most likely include one of Brian Boyle, Taylor Pyatt, Michael Del Zotto, or the Rangers can somehow trade Aaron Asham and Darroll Powe, which will be a lot harder then originally expected since both of them cleared waivers a few days back.
They can always move both Asham and Powe to the AHL, but I believe that would leave parts of their contract still going towards the cap.
Whatever the Rangers front office decides to do, you know that a trade is inevitable. That is unless of course the Rangers are willing to part ways with Zuccarello, since Stepan is without a doubt a higher priority signing. I would like for the Rangers to keep Zuccarello, but he is not a necessity by any means. If he wants a lot of money, then he is free to leave and I would not think twice about it.
As for Falk, I like the one-year deal at a low cost since he is only in New York City to add more depth at defense and is not expected to be a star or anything like that. He is a role player with some size and I am glad he will be suiting up for the Blueshirts in the 2013-2014 season.
