The New York Rangers agreed to terms with restricted free-agent defenseman Jacob Trouba, the team announced Friday. The deal is reportedly for seven years with an average annual value of $8 million, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.
Trouba was traded to the Rangers by the Winnipeg Jets in June in exchange for blue-liner Neal Pionk and a 2019 first-round pick, which the Jets used to select defenseman Ville Heinola.
The 6-foot-3 Trouba is coming off a career year. The 25-year-old tallied 50 points in 82 games while averaging nearly 23 minutes per night.
New York is now $906,000 above the cap ceiling with 22 players under contract and four RFAs unsigned, according to CapFriendly. Teams can exceed the cap by 10 percent during the offseason, so general manager Jeff Gorton has time to get his team back under the upper limit.
After Trouba's entry-level contract with the Jets expired, he held out for more than a month of the 2016-17 season before agreeing to a two-year bridge deal. When that expired, he and the Jets required arbitration to settle on a one-year, $5.5-million pact. The two sides were reportedly $3 million apart beforehand.
He didn't want to sign a long-term deal in Winnipeg because his fiancee is about to start her residency in her quest to become a doctor in the United States. "Her career is just as important as my career," he told the Winnipeg Sun's Ken Wiebe after the trade.
Trouba's new cap hit ties him with John Carlson as the league's fifth-highest-paid defenseman behind Erik Karlsson ($11.5M), Drew Doughty ($11M), P.K. Subban ($9M), and Oliver Ekman-Larsson ($8.25M).
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