SAN JOSE, CA - APRIL 05: Paul Martin #7 of the San Jose Sharks skates against the Colorado Avalanche at SAP Center on April 5, 2018 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Rocky W. Widner/NHL/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Paul Martin

New York Rangers: Five teams that New York could trade with on draft day

New York Rangers: Five teams that New York could trade with on draft day by Nicholas Zararis

The New York Rangers have a lot of cap space to use to their advantage. General manager Jeff Gorton should call Doug Wilson of San Jose and talk about their cap situation.

As the New York Rangers try to garner as many assets as possible in the earliest stage of their rebuild, the best asset they currently have is their cap space. According to CapFriendly, the Rangers have $25 million in cap space. With the salary cap rising around $3-7 million for the upcoming season, the Rangers will have roughly $28-32 million to play with. With that said, they need to go out and use it to their advantage.

And I’m not talking about free agency. Nope, I’m talking about absorbing bad contracts from around the league.

Let’s be honest, it is unlikely that the Rangers make the playoffs this year. They might as well add some ugly contracts to garner other assets including picks/prospects as well. Just look at the Rick Nash deal; they absorbed Matt Beleskey’s contract and were rewarded with Ryan Spooner for doing so. And his contract, $1.9 million because Boston retained 50 percent, isn’t that bad.

One team pushed up against the salary cap this offseason is the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks currently have the seventh highest payroll in the league and, including the $3 million cap increase, have about $10.5 million in cap room.

While that is a pretty decent number, they need to re-sign Joe Thornton, Tomas Hertl, Jannik Hansen, Chris Tierney, Joel Ward, Eric Fehr and Dylan DeMelo. Next year they have five players coming off their ELCs and Joe Pavelski, Jonnas Donskoi and Logan Couture will be UFAs.

Especially since they just signed Evander Kane to a seven year, $49 million deal, they need to shed salary desperately.

One player they could look to move is Paul Martin.

Martin is a 14 year NHL veteran. He’s been considered a pretty good puck moving defenseman throughout his career until recently. This past season was the first of his career where he didn’t tally 20 points or more other than 13-14 where he was hurt for a majority of the season and finished with 15 points.

Last year, Martin played just 14 NHL regular season games and only tallied two points. He was routinely a healthy scratch in the early stages of the season. In January, he was waived and thrown down to the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda for 14 games. Martin also played in seven playoff games where he didn’t register a single point.

He is one of the league’s most popular buyout candidates with just one year and $4.85 million left on his four year deal with a modified no-movement clause.

Martin wouldn’t be able to help the Rangers at this point in his career. He turned 37 in March and has lost a few steps. In fact if the Rangers were to acquire him, they’d likely buy him out. After all, his buyout would cost just over $2 million in 18-19 and $1.4 million in 19-20.

As for the asset that San Jose would give the Rangers, they only have one pick (a first rounder) through the first three rounds of this year’s draft. Maybe a second round pick or a third round pick in 2019 does the trick for Jeff Gorton.

Deals like this need to be discussed among the Rangers front office brass this offseason as the team begins to load up on young talent for the future.