Ok, perhaps Martin St. Louis could be the odd-man out

I guess I’m going to hedge my bets here. When Marc Staal signed his massive contract extension, my initial thought was that Carl Hagelin was going to be the odd-man out. It was a purely business decision under the assumption that the New York Rangers were, without a doubt, re-signing Martin St. Louis to an incentive-laden contract. After all, the Rangers do need to clear a spot for Anthony Duclair next season. Since Hagelin, MSL, and Mats Zuccarello are the only free agent wingers in top-nine roles, it makes sense that they would need to choose two of the three.

Understandably so, the notion of letting Hagelin go was met with some backlash. At that point, MSL had been producing points, and to be honest, I hadn’t 100% looked at his underlying numbers too much. I know how good Zucc’s and Hags’ numbers are, having evaluated them multiple times. I guess I fell victim to MSL’s reputation. Hey, it happens.

We’ve seen it on the ice, even when MSL was scoring: He sometimes looks a bit lost, and his defensive zone play has certainly taken a turn for the worse. The dude is 40 years old, but the first red flag for any player is his defensive zone play, especially under a skating-intensive system like Alain Vigneault’s strong-side overload/man coverage hybrid.

The second red flag is MSL’s recent production, which has been non-existent for about 14 games now. Generally you can live with this if he’s driving puck possession, but he simply hasn’t been doing that either. His CF% –aside from a significant jump after being traded to the Rangers last year– has been trending downward for quite sometime now.

Not a good trend.

It’s not like it’s only his CF that’s down, but his actual even strength production is down as well, and has been trending down, having dropped from 2.7 two seasons ago to 2.0 last season to 1.9 this season.

Also not a good trend.

There are still 30 games to go, and these numbers can change if he gets hot, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

But it’s not all bad, as MSL still continues to excel on the poweplay, with a better P/60 (5.5) and CF% (89.9%) than last year. That may have a lot to do with the addition of Dan Boyle to the powerplay, but you can’t complain about improved powerplay production. He’s also a fierce leader, someone the Rangers have been proven to rally behind. Chris Kreider has been one of the best beneficiaries of his tutelage. The mind doesn’t slow down, just the body. He also stunk when he got to NY last year (from an offensive perspective), and then lit it up in the playoffs.

In the end, the Rangers will need to make a guess. If they re-sign MSL, likely to a Jarome Iginla type deal with a low base salary and attainable bonuses, which MSL will they get? Will they get the guy that they are seeing now, that has appeared to lose a step at even strength and can’t score? Or will they get the MSL from the beginning of the year and the playoff run last year?

Another question: Is it worth potentially losing Hagelin or Zuccarello for one more year of MSL, if you don’t know which MSL you’re going to get?