It’s all beginning to look very familiar. What happened last year with K’Andre Miller may occur again as the New York Rangers deal with Braden Schneider. According to a report, the two sides have yet to sit down and discuss numbers, and the NHL offseason is hot on New York’s heels.
“Negotiations with restricted free agent Braden Schneider, meanwhile, have not yet begun,” Peter Baugh of The Athletic reported.
Schneider is set to become a restricted free agent (RFA) in the NHL. Coming off the recent experience with Miller, and subsequently watching him thrive in Carolina, one would expect Chris Drury and the Rangers to have learned their lesson. The fact that there has been no progress may indicate that isn’t the case.
Perhaps it’s still too early to tell. Or New York believes Miller’s and Schneider’s situations are not comparable, even if the similarities are there for the entire league to see.
K’Andre Miller of the Hurricanes.
Miller is thriving in Carolina
There’s no need to revisit how things went down with Miller, the former first-round pick in 2018 whom the Rangers signed-and-traded to the Hurricanes with a brand-new eight-year, $60 million contract.
Miller is now playing the best hockey of his NHL career and is in the Stanley Cup Final. New York is… Well, it’s still trying to figure out where it stands. Just as the Rangers are reportedly letting Jonny Brodzinski walk, they must make up their minds about Schneider.
With his two-year, $4.4 million extension expiring, Schneider, like Miller last year, will become an RFA. If the Rangers don’t get to work with his camp soon, they risk reaching June 30, when the rest of the league is allowed to speak with RFAs before the official start of free agency on July 1.
New York faces Schneider’s situation
Moreover, the silence can indeed speak volumes, and that could make up Schneider’s mind before New York draws its own conclusion. Schneider may feel the front office doesn’t really value him, choose not to re-sign in New York, and instead test the open waters of free agency.
He would still need another team to offer-sheet him and the Rangers to decline to match the offer—as to cash in the compensation draft pick. Many chips would have to fall into place, but Miller has some leverage to work things out in his favor.
That’s if he truly has had enough of the Rangers. It doesn’t seem to be the case, but with each minute he hears nothing from the organization that drafted him with a first-round pick in 2020, that possibility looms larger.
Offer sheet compensation
Projections for Schneider’s next deal vary greatly depending on whom you consult around the NHL. Still, for the sake of discussion, considering the 2026 compensation thresholds, it seems New York would receive a second-round pick at best in the event Schneider signs an offer sheet as an RFA.
Braden Schneider at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York.
According to Sportsnet, an offer sheet with an average annual value (AAV) between $1,575,969 and $2,387,832 results in third-round compensation, whereas an AAV ranging from $2,387,833 to $4,775,666 yields a second-round pick.
If the offer sheet’s AAV exceeds that figure but remains below $7,163,498, then the team losing its RFA receives a first- and third-round pick. Schneider’s next deal will likely be somewhere between $2 and $4.5 million. However, anything can happen in the NHL.
Rangers must get to work
In more ways than one, the sooner New York begins negotiations, the easier it will all go down. In order to do that, though, the Rangers must first decide what they are going to do. If they intend to keep him, then time is of the essence to get him under a new contract. The more days and weeks that pass, the greater the threat of arbitration (Schneider is eligible for it) becomes.
If the Rangers decide they are better off without him, then they must search for interested parties, perhaps the San Jose Sharks, who happen to hold the second overall pick in the NHL Draft, a position New York would love to be in.
Trading Schneider won’t be stress-free, though. In fact, it would cause an awful lot of extra headaches. As the Blueshirts have witnessed firsthand with Miller in Raleigh, if the defenseman finds success elsewhere, they never hear the end of it. If it happens twice in as many offseasons, New York may never live it down. Whichever route the Rangers go down, they will have to face the music.
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