The New York Rangers have come to terms on a seven-year contract with Jacob Trouba worth $56 million, the team announced Friday. This deal is a significant one as it now makes Trouba the team’s second-highest-paid skater and third-highest paid player overall behind only Artemi Panarin and Henrik Lundqvist.
This contract carries an $8 million cap hit annually and has firmly entrenched Trouba as a major part of the Rangers’ core for the long-haul. This was expected, of course, as the team traded Neal Pionk and the 20th-overall pick to the Jets in exchange for Trouba just over a month prior to this new deal.
The Rangers originally acquired the 20th-overall pick from the Jets as a part of the deal that saw Kevin Hayes traded to the Jets at the trade deadline last season, which allowed the Rangers to deal from a position of strength when ultimately sending the pick back to Winnipeg for a legitimate top-pairing blueliner.
The Jets wouldn’t win the Stanley Cup and Hayes would eventually sign a long-term deal with the Philadelphia Flyers. The Jets were able to recoup a fifth-round pick for Hayes from the Flyers.
Trouba never felt like a long-term piece that the Jets could build around, but he does seem like a natural fit on this suddenly-scary Rangers team that feels ready to compete after what would become an accelerated rebuild.
It isn’t easy to turn things around as quickly as the Rangers have, and in all fairness, they haven’t yet proven that they’re contenders with their roster as currently constructed. Still, it’s hard to shake a stick at a team that’s added Panarin, Trouba and Kaapo Kakko in just one offseason.
The 25-year-old Trouba scored eight goals and a career-high 50 points in 82 games last season and gives the team a very valuable two-way presence on their top pairing on the right side. Right-shot defenders are always highly coveted and it isn’t surprising to see Trouba sign such a major contract as he and the Rangers look to make a splash this coming season.
NHL Teams Making Moves
This is the second piece of major news to come out of the date as it was also reported earlier that the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames came together to pull of a rare trade within the Province of Alberta.
The Oilers would send Milan Lucic and his hefty contract to the Flames in exchange for Neal and his significant contract.
Related: Oilers Trade Lucic to Flames for Neal
It’s getting to the point of the offseason where team’s and players start to come to terms on what their plans are for the 2019-20 season and beyond and things will likely start to pick up from here until likely the middle of August.
It should be a fun few weeks in the NHL.
