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New York Rangers to buy out Henrik Lundqvist

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Henrik Lundqvist will not be returning to the New York Rangers next season.

The Athletic’s Rick Carpiniello is reporting that on Wednesday the Rangers will buy Lundqvist out of the final year of his seven-year, $59.5 million deal that has a cap hit of $8.5 million.

Lundqvist, 38, is the team’s franchise leader in wins, shutouts, and postseason victories. He won the Vezina Trophy in 2012 and was a finalist four other times. Hank led the team to the Stanley Cup Final in 2014.

The Rangers are moving on Lundqvist after finding themselves with a logjam in net. New York has two capable young goalie prospects in Russians Igor Shesterkin and Alexandar Georgiev. Shesterkin, who went 10-2-0 with a .932 save percentage during his rookie season, is going into the final year of his entry-level contract ($925k) while Georgiev, a part-time starter over the last three seasons, is a restricted free agent. The NHL’s flat salary cap of $81.5 million also likely played a factor in the decision.

The Rangers will now have $13 million in dead cap space next season.

After the New York Rangers got swept in the qualifying round by the Carolina Hurricanes, general manager Jeff Gorton said the team would not carry three goalies on its roster next season, which seemingly was writing on the wall for Lundqvist.

“It’s pretty obvious the scenarios that could happen here with our goaltending, but to have an answer for you today, I don’t have that answer, we don’t have that answer,” Gorton said to NHL.com. “We can all look at our cap and wonder what’s next, what we’re going to do? That’s what we’re going to go through.”

“Knowing the professional individual that Hank is, I can tell you that when we got off the plane back from Toronto, I did have a discussion with him,” added Rangers president John Davidson. “It was a personal discussion; we’ll leave it at that. We will continue having our discussions to figure out what avenues we’re going to take as we move forward. We’ll handle things the right way and just move forward with this.”

Lundqvist will now have to decide if he’d rather retire or sign a short-term contract with another team that has Stanley Cup aspirations. This year’s goalie market is unusually deep, but a Cup contending team like the Washington Capitals could have interest in Lundqvist as a backup if the price is right and they’re unable to bring back Braden Holtby.

Regardless of what he decides, Lundqvist will go down as one of the greatest goaltenders in NHL history and will likely have his number 30 raised to the rafters in Madison Square Garden. Hank is the sixth winningest goaltender (459) in NHL history – the only omission to his glowing resume is winning the Stanley Cup.

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