The New York Rangers have decided to walk away from a salary arbitration ruling to Nikolai Zherdev, making the forward an unrestricted free agent.
Zherdev was awarded a one-year, $3.9 million contract following his hearing on Friday. He was reportedly looking for $4.75 million, while the Rangers were offering less than $3.2 million.(source-TSN)
This is an interesting situation. Maybe the Rangers read our “Top 10 Worst NHL Contracts” article a decided they had enough of being the front runners in that regard. Nikolai Zherdev is a talented player with all kinds of upside but he hasn’t been able to live up to expectations thus far in his career. After letting Nic Antropov walk earlier in the off-season when he was asking for ridiculous money, it appears Glen Sather has done the same with Nikolai Zherdev.
From here there are 2 possible outcomes. Nikolai Zherdev continues to play uninspired hockey elsewhere and Sather looks brilliant, or he gets it going the way we all expected he would and the Rangers finally get some new leadership at the management level.