Not surprisingly, two days after the regular season ended, New York fired head coach Peter Laviolette, who led the Rangers to the conference finals in his first season at Madison Square Garden but was not given a second opportunity following this season’s failure.
On Friday, the Rangers hired former Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, who led Pittsburgh to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, but had missed the playoffs the previous three years.
But even with the coaching question answered, there will be more changes to come in New York as the club strives to rebuild while negotiating a difficult salary cap scenario. The Rangers now have only $1.7 million in cap space, ranking 13th in the NHL.
For the Rangers, Miller’s decision must come first.
Their top priority will be to make a decision on defenseman K’Andre Miller, the Rangers’ 2018 first-round draft pick. As an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent, the 25-year-old is a top trade candidate, seeking a significant rise from the $3.87 million salary he got the previous two seasons.
The route general manager Chris Drury takes in the Miller negotiations will have an impact on the rest of the roster. As Eric Charles of the influential Forever Blueshirts site pointed out on Thursday, “there’s reason to believe that if Miller, a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, can be retained at a reasonable cost, Carson Soucy is expendable. Assuming Zac Jones is not in the plans for regular duty, once again—
Charles proposed a trade that would give Jones, a 2019 third-round draft pick from the University of Massachusetts, more ice time while also bringing some much-needed toughness to the Rangers’ defense.
Durable, left-handed defenseman would add toughness.
The Forever Blueshirts writer advises Drury “to contact the San Jose Sharks and look into a possible trade for Mario Ferraro.”
Jones would most certainly receive the chance to play on a regular basis on the NHL’s weakest team, with Ferraro out of the picture.
Ferraro, a six-year veteran from Toronto, also played collegiate hockey at Massachusetts. The Sharks selected him in the third round of the 2019 draft, and according to Erika Towne of the Fear the Fin website, he “instantly became the Sharks’ best defenseman” when San Jose moved Erik Karlsson before the 2023-2024 season, after he won the Norris Trophy the previous year.
The 25-year-old Ferraro missed the end of the season due to a fractured ankle sustained on April 9, but the ailment did not necessitate surgery, and the left-handed defender is expected to be fully prepared for the 2025-2026 season when the training camp opens.
Aside from the ankle injury, Ferraro has been known for his durability. He appeared in 78 games each of the previous two seasons and 72 the year before that. However, all of that work has yielded little in return, as the Sharks have missed the playoffs in each of Ferraro’s six seasons.
With only 52 points, San Jose had the NHL’s lowest record in 2024-2025.
Ferraro will enter the final season of his four-year, $13 million deal with the Sharks, which means the Sharks will most likely trade him at the red deadline next season if he is not shipped away this summer.
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