The New York Rangers had one big catch to make this free agent season and they managed to close the deal with Derek Stepan before going to arbitration with the centerman.
The end-result was a six-year, $39 million contract for the 25-year old Stepan.
“It’s a great feeling,” Stepan said on NHL.com. “I can’t be more excited to be a part of a team that I absolutely love. I love the city of New York, I’m grateful for the fans, grateful for the management there. Me and my wife are extremely happy to be there for the next six years.”
Stepan has spent his five-year career on Broadway.
“It went all the way to the door [for a hearing], but I think Jeff did a great job,” Stepan said. “There wasn’t any bad blood through the whole thing. It always seemed that we were close and it was just a matter of just getting over one hump here, one hump there. It went the way I expected it to. It went the way I wanted it to. Hats off to him and to my agent for doing it the way they did.”
Rangers’ general manager Jeff Gorton made the deal work at the 11th hour in his first major signing as the Blueshirts new GM.
“Derek is a player we know real well, and to see what he’s done in this league, the success he’s had, the leadership qualities he has, this is one of the guys we want to build around,” Gorton said on BlueshirtsUnited.com.
Stepan was drafted in the second round of the 2008 Entry Draft.
“I’m grateful,” said Stepan, who was New York’s second-round pick (No. 51) at the 2008 NHL Draft and made his Rangers debut two years later. “I came into the League and I was given an opportunity to be a part of an Original Six team, an organization that has treated me extremely well, and now I get to go into my next six years with them. I think we have an exciting group of guys and we have a group of guys that want to take that next step. I think we have a great group of guys. I think that’s where it really starts; how close our teams have been in the last four or five years has a lot to do with the group of guys we have in the room. We’ve got a competitive group and there’s nothing but exciting things to come for us moving forward.
“To be able to be a part of this for the next six years, trying to find a way to take that next step in our team’s goals and finding that extra hump, it’s really cool and it’s a special feeling to be a part of it.”
In Nashville, Colin Wilson signed a four-year, $15.75 million contract with the Predators on Monday.
Wilson and the Preds avoided arbitration as they did with Craig Smith earlier.
“Certainly we were hopeful based on the [Smith] signing that [it] gave us a pretty clear position we felt where Colin could fit,” Predators general manager David Poile told The Tennessean. “We did make the trip up here to Toronto. We met [Sunday] night with our lawyers to go over the brief and what have you, so we were ready to go to arbitration, but a couple of calls [Sunday] night and one [Monday] morning sort of solidified that we were both in the same place.”
Wilson had career highs with 20 goals, 42 points in the 2014-15 season.
“Everybody kind of reaches their potential or blossoms at different times,” Poile said. “Colin would be the first to admit that he’s getting better every day, more mature with his game. I think [his] consistency is an area that he’d like to improve on a little bit. Once he can get the handle on that, maybe and hopefully last year was just the tip of the iceberg for what he can do offensively for us.”
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