It wasn’t much of a surprise that the Rangers re-signed Brett Howden yesterday. Given how much he played the last three seasons as the 4C, re-signing him was inevitable. The timing of re-signing him is what matters here, as it opens expansion draft options for the Rangers with Howden, Colin Blackwell, Kevin Rooney, and Julien Gauthier.
Exposure rules
The rules of the expansion draft get a little muddy when we get into the specifics. We know the Rangers will protect 7 forwards, 3 defensemen and 1 goalie. We also know that the Rangers will protect –barring a trade– Artemiy Panarin, Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Ryan Strome, Pavel Buchnevich, and Filip Chytil. That’s six in total. Alexis Lafreniere, Kaapo Kakko, and Vitali Kravtsov are exempt.
The 7th protection slot is going to be a decision between Howden, Blackwell, Rooney, Gauthier, and Phil Di Giuseppe.
However the Rangers must expose at least two forwards under contract. RFAs don’t count as under contract. Prior to extending Howden, the only two players under contract were Blackwell and Rooney, thus they were going to be exposed. Now Howden makes a third, opening up options.
Can protect Blackwell
It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the Rangers will expose Rooney to meet half of the forward criteria. Given how well Blackwell played up and down the lineup, and the comparison he got to Jesper Fast earlier in the season, protecting Blackwell is now an option.
This might give us some insight into how the Rangers view their fourth line priorities for next season. Howden’s struggles since coming to New York are noted. Blackwell is likely going to be a key cog in the fourth line next season, possibly bumping up to the top-nine as needed. He appears to be ahead of Howden in the priority chart, which is something we weren’t sure of before this extension.
Aside: And to be frank, the Rangers really screwed this up by not giving him time in the AHL first. We don’t know if this was Jeff Gorton and David Quinn trying to justify the Ryan McDonagh trade, but Howden shouldn’t have been in the NHL to start. They botched his career path, or at the very least didn’t put him in a position to succeed.
In this scenario, I’d expect the Rangers to lose either Gauthier or Rooney. Seattle has some great analytical minds in their front office, and the noted struggles of Howden will be clear to them.
Trade options
Another, albeit less likely, option is opening up trade scenarios. The Rangers can now include one of Rooney, Howden, or Blackwell in a trade before the expansion draft. While thoughts go to Jack Eichel, that’s not the route I see the Rangers going, at least pre-expansion draft.
Instead, I see the Rangers using one of these forwards in a swap to utilize the 3rd defense protection spot. As of now, it will default to Libor Hajek. There is an option to trade with a team needing a fourth defensemen to be protected to gain another asset. Let’s use Tampa as an example here, as they need to protect McDonagh, Hedman, Cernak, and Sergachev. Up front, there’s a case for only protecting six forwards due to cap constraints: Stamkos, Kucherov, Point, Palat, Gourde, and Cirelli.
In this hypothetical, the Rangers swap Gauthier and a 5th for Cernak. Tampa protects Gauthier, and the Rangers protect Cernak. Then post expansion draft, the Rangers trade Cernak back to Tampa for Gauthier and a 3rd. Not the best example, but this is the line of thinking.
Having Howden under contract gives the Rangers additional expansion draft options. While it is more likely the Rangers go the easy route and just protect Gauthier, we could see some wild trades go down to use that last defense protection slot. There’s still a few weeks for this to happen, too. The end of July is expected to be crazy.
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