Rangers say no

Rangers easily decline and St. Louis easily decline cause they are in cap trouble and adding a bad defensmen with a 4 mil cap hit is a horrible idea.

Rangers are better off just eating the salary now and having all that cap space the following season, they decline

Why take on an additional 2 years of Neal when we can buy out Lundqvist for the same hit that expires next year at $1.5M?

Fair point. The problem for NYR is that if they buy-out Lundqvist this year, it costs them $5.5M against the 2020-21 cap, leaving them roughly $9M to sign 5 RFAs. That's not nearly enough. There's no way they trade a first rounder to dump this contract, so this trade offers them some veteran value at forward and cap savings this year in return. That said, this deal probably wouldn't be their first choice.

It costs them 5.5, but clears his 8.5M, so it is a net gain of 3M, to add to the 14.4M space they already have. It'll be close if they want to sign all 5 RFAs, but definitely close.