Rangers vs. Blue Jackets: A Mediocre Game So Let's Talk About J.T. Miller
The Rangers won 1-0 on the back of a stellar Igor Shesterkin performance. But that game was kind of boring, so let's dig in on a potential J.T. Miller trade.
- Sometimes scoreless ties are riveting. I can remember Rangers games from the past where that was absolutely true. This one was low-event hockey, and for the low number of events there actually were, both Igor Shesterkin and Daniil Tarasov were their for each team.
- As for Igor:
That’s an 11.5-million dollar game
— Joe Fortunato (@JoeFortunatoBSB) January 19, 2025
- Igor was brilliant. This kind of Igor performance is why I've spent the last several weeks rolling my eyes at the people who were trying to pin any more than a fraction of the Rangers free-fall on him. He was not at the top of his game, but both the defensive structure and the team effort level were so awful that pointing the finger at Igor for not serially bailing them out, night after night, was just ludicrous.
- Unrelated to this game but directly related to Igor Shesterkin, and because you might have missed it, this is pretty big news:
**Exclusive**
— Marco D'Amico (@mndamico) January 17, 2025
The NHL has canceled escrow payments from players for the rest of the year; due to higher revenue earnings.
Not only that, but they're also sharing their extra profits with the players (2-6%).
The salary cap was projected to go to $93M, I'm not so sure anymore.. https://t.co/Q8FQ8Zbnm5
- I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in the escrow stuff, because I'm not. I do know that it's a major sticking point for a lot of players in the current CBA. But the upshot of this is, escrow payments are being canceled because of increased revenue. Elliott Friedman reported (and, yes, much more on what Elliott Friedman has been reporting about J.T. Miller coming later) a few months ago that it seemed likely the NHL's salary cap would jump more than the expected 5% maximum increase after this season. The escrow cancellation is another indicator that a bigger jump is likely coming. This is good for all kinds of reasons, but it should start to relieve some of the anxiety some fans have over Igor's $11.5M AAV. Remember the real culprit that rendered Jacob Trouba's contract so ugly wasn't as much his play, though it had obviously declined, as it was the salary cap being kept flat because of COVID. If COVID never flattens the salary cap sure, we would have still complained about Trouba's poor play, but the $8M AAV would have been less galling. Anyway, this is good news!
