Before yesterday’s loss to the Dallas Stars, the Rangers made a surprising move, scratching Drew Fortescue. This came as a shock because Fortescue was playing well and the other options–Vincent Iorio or Urho Vaakanainen, of which the latter played–were nowhere near as good. News spread quickly that scratching Drew Fortescue was because he was due a bonus, but that didn’t make sense because while James Dolan is a lot of things, cheap is not one of them. Naturally, there was more to the story.
1. To be clear, the narrative that scratching Drew Fortescue was due to his bonus is most likely untrue. The Rangers are far from a cheap organization and denying a kid a nearly $100,000 bonus is not something they do regularly. It was pointed out that the Rangers did this with Will Cuylle as well, costing him the same bonus of $82,500 in 2024. Again, the rumors spread that this was due to his bonus. Again, this is unfounded.
2. Instead, scratching Drew Fortescue was due to his restricted free agency status. As Mollie Walker pointed out, scratching Fortescue–and by extension, Cuylle–was for future arbitration and offer sheet protection. Fortescue was due arbitration and would have been open to offer sheets at the end of his entry level contract had he played in this one extra game. It’s a weird quirk in the CBA that I don’t fully understand, so don’t ask me for details. At some point, you just have to take things at their word, and this is the case. Scratching Drew Fortescue was to protect the team from an offer sheet and perhaps keep the cost down on his next contract.
3. Scratching Drew Fortescue for future contract reasons certainly seems selfish too, but it’s more easily explained away when it comes to offer sheets and arbitration. But it’s nowhere near as bad as scratching him to avoid a bonus payment, something that goes against the mold of what the Rangers have been under Dolan. He’s not cheap with the Rangers or Knicks, so that’s why the bonus payment seemed off.
4. Fortescue’s ELC expires after the 2027-2028 season, likely right as Chris Drury envisions the Rangers truly competing for a Stanley Cup. To his credit, the ruthlessness shown here indicates he’s willing to be a bit creative to help create future cap space. It was helpful with Will Cuylle this past summer when he signed his two year, $3.9 million extension. With arbitration and offer sheets, there’s a chance he could have received a bigger offer and put the Rangers in a tough position. The same logic applies to Fortescue.
Drury deserves a lot of criticism, but this is a decision that should be viewed as a positive in the long run.
5. On the surface, scratching Drew Fortescue, a rookie they are putting a lot of long term stock into since they burned a year on his ELC, looks selfish. But there is some planning here. It’s worth noting that Cuylle got a signing bonus as part of his current contract, so I wonder if there’s a bit of a wink wink, nudge nudge thing going on where the Rangers simply gave him the $82,500 bonus (with interest) in his current contract. After all, Cuylle’s $600,000 signing bonus is a bit off from the usual $500,000 increments we see in most standard contracts.
Let’s bookmark this for 3 years from now, to see if Fortescue gets a similar bump in bonus payments on his next contract.