This off-season marked a watershed in lengthy extensions for defensemen. Six, seven and even a lot of eight year contracts have been doled out in recent years, with Cale Makar, Dougie Hamilton, Zach Werensky, Seth Jones, Miro Heiskanen and Quinn Hughes all getting 6-8 years and numbers north of $7.8M in the last few months.
It therefore was only a matter of time before the Rangers added Adam Fox to the list, announcing today that they have inked him to a seven year extension with an Annual Average Value (AAV) of $9.5M. The contract will take Fox through to the end of the 2028-29 season, and ensures that he’ll be in Rangers Blue for the foreseeable future.
Having won the Norris Trophy in just his second season last year, the 23 year old Fox has picked up where he left off, leading the Rangers through nine games with two goals and seven assists for a team high nine points. He, along with Igor Shesterkin, have been the two top performers through for the Rangers through the first month of the season, with Chris Kreider not far behind.
With another $9.5M of Cap Space locked up next year, the Rangers now have a little under $71M of the projected $81.5M of space used up on 16 players. Perhaps the most important contracts will be the renewals for Kaapo Kakko and Sammy Blais, and then what to do about the back-up goaltender situation with Alexandar Georgiev‘s deal finishing.
They’ll also need to figure out what to do about Ryan Strome, with his current projected value on the open market being far beyond what the Rangers are likely to have available to them in terms of open Cap space. In addition there’s decisions to be made over resigning/replacement of the likes of Kevin Rooney, Greg McKegg, Julien Gauthier and Libor Hajek, with the latter two at risk of not being qualified as RFAs.
As for the investment, there was likely very little discussion over whether or not to get Fox signed quickly. By the end of the year, it’s possible his value could have risen up past the $10M mark, and waiting longer would just increase the likelihood.
Fox’s play both offensively and defensively has been impressive to this point, and belies his relative youthfulness. There’s also some question as to whether he might be a future captain for a side, that has gone with alternates since trading Ryan McDonagh back in February of 2018.
Whatever the future holds for the Rangers, it will almost certainly feature Adam Fox on defense for much of the remainder of this young decade.