Breaking Down the New York Rangers' 2025 RFA Class

This is the second of two stories looking at the New York Rangers free agent classes. You can read the breakdown of the upcoming unrestricted free agents here.

The New York Rangers have a total of 11 players in the organization who are set to become restricted free agents in just a couple of weeks, including seven of which who are eligible for arbitration.

Players who are restricted free agents must be given a qualifying offer in order for the team to maintain their rights at the start of free agency. Qualifying offers depend on the player’s status and previous year's salary, but essentially it’s an “on the table” type of offer that both parties can fall back on if all else fails. If a player is not given their qualifying offer prior to the start of free agency, they become an unrestricted free agent.

Players who are eligible for arbitration must meet certain requirements specific to their age and years of experience. Either the player or the team can initiate arbitration, which is a process where both the player and the team propose a salary number and they they take their case before an independent arbitrator to resolve the dispute between the two numbers.

There is one caveat with RFA’s, and that’s the potential for offer sheets. While a restricted free agent's rights may belong to the team he’s been with and that extended him the qualifying offer, other teams in the league can still make that player an contract offer. In the event that the player accepts that offer, his current team has seven days to either match it, or decline to match and let him go to the team that signed the player to the offer sheet in exchange for compensation in the form of draft picks. While contracts with low cap hits won’t carry any compensation, the higher the AAV, the more draft picks can be involved.

With that, let's start with the Rangers' RFA's who are eligible for arbitration.

Adam Edstrom

Despite having his season come to an early end at the beginning of February with a lower-body injury, Adam Edstrom made some serious strides this year. He proved that he can be a full-time fourth line forward on this Rangers team and alongside Matt Rempe, could make for a unique—and extremely tall—line. Edstrom is coming to the end of his entry-level contract signed back in May of 2022. His qualifying offer is about $33,000 less than his current cap hit which comes in at $846,667. Given the injury, I have a feeling he’s not going to have as much leverage as he would have had he completed a full 82 game season, especially with how he was performing leading up to his injury. That being said, I’d expect him to re-up for another year, perhaps on a one-way deal with a slight raise attached. 

Prediction: 1 year x $950,000

Arthur Kaliyev

Another player who had his season cut short due to injury, Arthur Kaliyev was claimed off waivers mid-season by the Rangers from the Los Angeles Kings. Kaliyev proved he could score goals at the NHL level but didn’t blow anyone away with his all around game. The Rangers are quite crowded on both wings, even if they are lacking right-handed shooting wingers, and given that Kaliyev was just a waiver claim and plagued a bit with injury, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rangers allow him to become an unrestricted free agent. I still believe the Rangers could use a guy like Kaliyev, but with Brennan Othmann, Brett Berard, and now Gabe Perreault all in the picture (at the risk of sounding like Peter Laviolette) there are only so many open spots in the line up. 

Prediction: Walks to free agency, signs for 1 year x $875,000 with the Islanders 

K’Andre Miller

This will undoubtedly be one of the more fascinating story lines to follow this summer. K’Andre Miller’s future with the New York Rangers is certainly up in the air. His next deal will be the the former first round pick's third professional contract in his young NHL tenure. Following the end of his ELC in 2023, Miller signed a two-year bridge deal with an AAV of $3.872 million—a deal that made good sense at the time, seeing as there was a real chance that Miller would be looking to cash in on a big paycheck on a long term deal at the end of it.