2021-22 Rangers

I have something similar looking in my AGM's with Trouba instead of Fox and Pionk included. I always give Panarin around 10 mil for a contract and I cant understand why. I think at the most he should get 8.5-9 but the consensus around here is he will be getting upwards of 10. He is great but sometimes I think the Rangers should avoid signing him and start putting all their efforts into drafting high end homegrown talent instead of relying on FA like we always do, especially at our current juncture. It seems to almost always turn out poorly for us i.e. Richards, Shatty, Redden, Boyle, Yandle, etc...

If we sign Panarin, he immediately becomes the best offensive player in the organization. He's 27, so right in his prime, and we should expect at least about 4 years of top level production. There's for sure a risk of him not playing up to his contract, but I think it's worth taking.

The other signings you mentioned, it's true that they didn't/haven't worked out, to varying degrees (except Yandle who I think played quite well for us. 47 pts in his full season despite poor usage by AV). Richards was serviceable, but was already 31 when we signed him. Shatty was injured and been unlucky, but this year has been pretty solid defensively at least. Redden and Boyle were dumpster fires.

I agree its just a thought that keeps popping up in my mind. With us getting a bunch of picks and hopefully a lot of high end talent in the next couple years, we are blocking out our potentially decent prospects in our own system for a long period of time. Both for on ice minutes and getting higher (worse) draft selection from winning a few more pointless games because of Panarin. As it stands it seems hard for Quinn to give our prospects a normal amount of playing time on a bottom of the standings team.

In the end I think it comes down to us fully committing to a rebuild. Many people cant handle the fact that we are most likely going to be pretty bad for the foreseeable future and would like to speed things up by signing high end FA's. I think that's the wrong direction to go. FA's are probably more available to us because we are a big market team, but I think the timing might not be right for now. Could be wrong though, just my thoughts.