Here's what will happen next;
- A hearing date with an impartial third party will be scheduled to occur for both players - sometime between July 20th and August 4th. The player and the Rangers can continue to negotiate up until the arbitration hearing.
- If they get to the hearing with no deal - then the player and the Rangers each propose a salary and present their case to the arbitrator - who reviews the information and decides on a fair salary.
- But the team gets a huge advantage here - if they choose to - they can reject the salary. If that happens, the player then moves from an RFA to a UFA. And as an unrestricted free agent - the player can make his own deal with any team he chooses with no remaining options for the Rangers.
So, what does this mean? First of all - it means that Nik and Ryan are not accepting the Rangers' qualifying offers. It also means they have not yet gotten an offer from another team. But of course - other teams are often reluctant to spend time working with a RFA player when the original team can just "match and snatch" the player back. The hearing date serves as a negotiation deadline. And of course there is the danger that the arbitrator sets a salary level the Rangers won't want to pay - so it can result in the player leaving.
Also - there can be an emotional effect on the player. Hearings can get a little nasty as the Rangers have to make a public case against their own player as a way of keeping costs down.
We like Ryan a lot and hope the Rangers keep him. One factor on our side - Callahan will cost a lot less than Zherdev - making him easier to keep.
But will Sather, having already lost one Russian Nik (Antropov) decide to let the other Nik walk as well? Time will tell.
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