With his Rangers’ future still up in the air, 24 year old defenseman Braden Schneider has elected to file for salary arbitration. He was the only one of three eligible Blueshirts to file for arbitration before today’s 5:00pm Eastern deadline to do so. Neither William Trudeau – acquired from Montreal in exchange for Brett Berard, nor Lauri Pajuniemi – who became a free agent last Summer and returned to Europe chose to go this route.
The filing means that he is no longer able to sign an offer sheet from another team, though the prospect of doing so seemed unlikely given his struggles last year, where an injury to Adam Fox saw his ice time jump from 17:52 per game to 20:27 in this past season. The increased opportunity did not result in better results however, scoring just 2 goals on the year, four fewer than his career high of 6 set in 2024-25. In addition opposition found it easier to play against him with a Corsi For % of just 45.77 per NaturalStatTrick.com that was better than only Carson Soucy and a limited audition for Drew Fortescue which totaled just 9 games at the end of the year.
At Even Strength last season, he was on the ice for 65 goals against, while the Rangers scored 60, putting him at a ratio of 48.0% ahead of only Vladislav Gavrikov – 46.4, Scott Morrow – 43.3 and Connor Mackey who was on for 3 goals against but 0 goals for.
Next Steps
The league will now schedule a hearing between July 20th and August 1st to hear both sides make their cases, with the Rangers able to elect a one or two year term based on the ruling. If he is awarded $4.95M or more, the team has 48 hours to completely walk away from the deal – as happened with Nikolai Zherdev on August 4th of 2009. More likely is that either Schneider will be traded or both sides will come to an agreement, something that can happen right up to the time of the hearing.
For Chris Drury, it appears that his preference right now would be to try and make a trade for another forward. With Scott Morrow and Vincent Iorio both waiver eligible, it may be his preference to open up a spot and have the pair compete for that, which would also save the team a bit more of their $7M or so Cap space that remains. There also remains some significant questions as to whether the Rangers have enough offense up front, especially when you consider their long term challenges of generating scoring chances at even strength.
From Schneider’s perspective, creating some deadline pressure on the Rangers means his future can be decided quicker, as Drury’s preference is likely to give the acquiring team the opportunity to negotiate a new contract, rather than saddle them with a less favorable deal coming out of arbitration.
Keeping Schneider – What Would It Mean
Even with Drury’s potential interest in trading Schneider, it may not happen right away. We’ve seen instances both with the Rangers and across the league, where the sides figure a way forward and get a contract done. It many cases it still results in a trade later on, but it would give Schneider a chance to turn his game around with less pressure. There’s also the recent injury risk to the newly acquired Sean Durzi, as well as that to top defenseman Adam Fox. Bot have missed significant time over the past two seasons, and moving Schneider now without a viable back-fill, could result in a decidedly weaker line-up should something happen to one or both players in front of him on the right side.
The other thing to consider is what it means for Scott Morrow. The player that was returned as part of the package for K’Andre Miller to Carolina last Summer is thought of as a potential full-time NHLer. His stint with the Rangers last year could be best described as up-and-down, while his performance in Hartford was probably more down than up.
Even with that said, the chance to claim a right-handed defenseman for nothing would likely mean he’s unlikely to pass through waivers, and that could also impact the depth of the organization. Even Iorio might be a potential waiver casualty when you consider the likes of Ty Emberson and Jarred Tinordi being claimed in prior season.
Whatever ends up being decided, this arbitration filing is likely to give us resolution sooner rather than later.