Regarding the Rangers, the cap situation and what I believe to be an impending Kevin Shattenkirk buyout:

1. This is an imperfect solution to the problem that was created when contracts to Shattenkirk, Marc Staal and Brendan Smith aged poorly and the team leaped into the deep end of the free agent pool this summer. No one is suggesting otherwise.

But buying out No. 22, who came to New York with the best of intentions and who has conducted himself with nothing but class from the moment he slipped into the Blueshirt two years ago, is the least painful way to go about fixing the mess, even with the massive $6,083,333 in 2020-21 dead space that would generate.

If the Rangers could have traded Shattenkirk without taking back an equally onerous contract in return, if not worse, don’t you think they would have done it? They have been dangling the defenseman, who has a 10-team no-trade clause that is believed to include every Canadian team, since February. What should they do, add a sweetener in the form of a first-round draft pick to the package?

2. Marc Staal, the second senior Ranger to Henrik Lundqvist, is an important presence in the room and a more solid defender than Shattenkirk. But if Staal played the right side, where the club seems set one-two-three with Jacob Trouba, Tony DeAngelo and Adam Fox, then a buyout of No. 18 would likely have been under serious consideration. The left side now consists of Brady Skjei, Staal and Libor Hajek, who has five games of NHL experience and is coming off a shoulder injury, with Ryan Lindgren and Yegor Rykov behind them.

There is, frankly, more of an immediate need for Staal, who kills penalties, than for Shattenkirk, who will lose his power play time to Trouba and Fox. If Fox needs to serve an apprenticeship in Hartford the way that Ryan McDonagh did in 2010, the Rangers could fill the breach with Brendan Smith (if he is not bought out) or perhaps sign a Freddie Claesson-type (or Claesson, himself, if still available) to plug the short-term hole until the lad from Jericho is ready for Broadway.

3. The Rangers, with a Shattenkirk buyout, the charge against the 2017 buyout of Dan Girardi and the retained salary on Ryan Spooner, would be carrying just under $7.5 million in dead space next season. That is a crushing amount, I agree, and it does not even account for the fact it could even grow by another $3.57 million in the event of a 2020 Staal buyout.

But the Rangers have to get from here to there, and who knows what the roster will look like heading into next offseason? Again, it is a mess that the team created all by itself. There is no perfect way to address the problem, but I do not see more attractive alternatives.

4. I am not trading Chris Kreider for future assets to solve a cap problem. Period.

5. The two-year, $8 million contract to which GM Jeff Gorton signed Vlad Namestnikov last summer only made sense if the Rangers were going to ship out either Kevin Hayes or Mika Zibanejad (what a difference a year makes!) during the off-season. Perhaps Gorton made the deal under the belief that Namestnikov was about to flee to the KHL. Regardless, No. 90’s contract is out of whack with his production (11-20=31 including a 23-game drought and another stretch with one goal in 17 contests) and usage.

The Rangers have been looking to move Namestnikov, who played with admirable bite after a Game 2 scratch, but have not been able to find a taker willing to assume the final year of his deal. Again, would you have the team surrender draft picks in order to facilitate a trade? Ridiculous. And wiping the $4 million off the slate would not independently make the team cap compliant.

6. J.T. Miller played for his $874,000 qualifier in 2015-16 coming off his entry-level contract after recording 23 points (10-13) in 58 games the previous season. The winger has done just fine for himself thereafter, signing a two-year bridge deal with the Rangers worth $2.75 million per before getting a five-year contract with Tampa Bay for $5.25 million per before his trade to Vancouver.

So yes, I expect DeAngelo and Brendan Lemieux to play for their respective qualifiers of $874,125 this season. The players have zero leverage as restricted free agents without arbitration rights and the Rangers have zero space with which to up the ante. The players will get their shots at big(ger) money next season, when they will be arbitration-eligible, and every season after that. The CBA works both ways.