Rangers Avoid Arbitration With Miller

On Wednesday, the New York Rangers avoided arbitration with one of their restricted free agents, coming to terms with forward J.T. Miller, signing a 2-year, $5.5 million deal.  Miller's hearing wasn't going to happen until August 2nd, but that was just some posturing for the player, as the two sides were able to agree well ahead of time.

The 2011 1st round pick has now appeared in four seasons for the Rangers and this was the first on a truly full-time basis, so he's started to really make his mark for the club.  In the 2016 season, he finished with 22 goals and 43 points in all 82 games, ranking him 160th overall in pool scoring and 112th among all forwards.  That puts him right in the middle of the pool rankings.

At the end of last season, Miller was the pivot between Derick Brassard and Rick Nash on the team's second line, which should probably play a big part on where the team decides to play him to start this coming season and by those indications, he should have some good linemates.

As for the rest of the Rangers' Summer, they have a lot of work left to do, namely their remaining restricted free agents, Kevin Hayes, Chris Kreider and Dylan McIlrath, all of which are potentially headed to arbitration as well.  There isn't a great deal of space left under the ceiling, as their potential 23-man roster, as it stands, only has $7.7 million left.  Of course, for some of those fill-ins in blue, their cap number will be taken out, when replaced by a new signee.  Those names in blue are very much open for interpretation and/or replacement, they do act as good placeholders though.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Rick Nash	7.800	Dan Girardi	5.500	Henrik Lundqvist	8.500
Derek Stepan	6.500	Ryan McDonagh	4.700	Antti Raanta	1.000
Derick Brassard	5.000	Kevin Klein	2.000
Mats Zuccarello	4.500	Nick Holden	1.650
J.T. Miller	2.750
Oscar Lindberg	0.650
Tanner Glass	1.450	Marc Staal	5.700
Michael Grabner	1.600
Nathan Gerbe	0.600
Pavel Buchnevich	0.925	Brady Skjei	0.925
Ryan Gropp	0.808	Adam Clendening	0.600
Adam Tambellini	0.803
Nicklas Jensen	0.600
Cristoval Nieves	0.755
Adam Chapie	0.800	Calle Andersson	0.662	Brandon Halverson	0.773
Steven Fogarty	0.750	Ryan Graves	0.633	Mackenzie Skapski	0.663
Malte Stromall	0.743	Michael Paliotta	0.600	Magnus Hellberg	0.625
Chris Brown	0.575	Chris Summers	0.600
		Mat Bodie	0.600

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system