Gorton and JD most likely did not want to buy out anyone and the fact that they did buy out shatty most likely means that the markets they were exploring with the bad contracts of smith, shattenkirk and vladdy were most likely non exsitent and they were not going to sell kreider for pennies on the dollar. buying out staal would be more friendly in terms of cap hit but its more than just cap hit. Staal was the only consistent dman for the rangers last season while shatty was making $6.6 mil to rarely get in the lineup and be useful, it would be crazy to think that anyone was less productive and and more deserving of a buyout than shattenkirk

Every single metric says you are flat out wrong. Staal has been our worst defenseman for years now and its really not even close. And i wear a Marc Staal jersey to Rangers games still. Really think he is a great dude. He is a traffic cone on the ice and a total negative player.

Im not a NYR fan, but I've read a lot about how replaceable (and even simply bad) was Staal last year. Meanwhile, Shatty numbers seemed OK, unlike Staal.


One of the source https://www.blueshirtbanter.com/2019/8/1/20749536/thoughts-on-kevin-shattenkirks-buyout-and-what-new-york-rangers-could-have-done-differently

look at the stats from this past season, staal only missed 3 games, all of which due to the flu. Shatty missed 9, most of them due to his play. Also, staal was playing more mins and as a top 2 or top 4 guy and was only a -9 while shatty was playing less mins as either top4 or top 6 and was a -15. Plus, he was supposed to run the powerplay yet he only had 7 pp points thats third on the team for defensemen alone. In the years prior staal had not been a good sight but he was clearly better than shatty, plus minus shows clearly that Staal was not a TOTAL NEGATIVE player.

Brand new account troll coming at it with TOI and +/-. Are you serious? Clown.

and pp points, the reason any team even wanted shatty but ok.