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What To Expect From Will Cuylle Going Into Critical Contract Year
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- What To Expect From Will Cuylle Going Into Critical Contract Year
What should we expect from New York Rangers forward Will Cuylle this upcoming season?
Going into the 2025-26 season, there were high expectations for Cuylle, as he had shown flashes of his potential the previous year, recording 20 goals, 25 assists, and 45 points in 82 games.
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The hope was for Cuylle to emerge as a bona fide top-six forward for the Rangers under first-year head coach Mike Sullivan.
Despite his minutes increasing from 15:05 to 16:51, Cuylle's point total decreased to 38, and he floated between a top-six and bottom-six all season long.
The 24-year-old forward spent some time playing a top-six and top power-play role, but he wasn't able to fully immerse himself in those positions.
Sullivan noted that Cuylle's time spent playing a bottom-six role was for the purpose of better balancing out the lineup.
"If you look at our forwards and rank them in the top six, Will would be in our top six without a doubt, but the question is what are the best combinations that set our team up for success?" Sullivan said. "I've always been a strong believer that balance is important because if you are reliant on one or two lines every night to try to produce offensively or try to win games for you, my experience has been that it's hard to win consistently in today's game.
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"An opportunity to create a little bit of balance through our lineup, both upfront, but also through our blueline, I think gives us more of an opportunity to build a team game where any particular line on any given night could help us."
This upcoming season, it will be even more of an uphill battle for Cuylle to carve out a consistent top-six role.
The additions of Pavel Dorofeyev and Oliver Bjorkstrand give the Rangers more depth at the wing position the team didn't have last year, while Gabe Perreault is primed to slot onto one of the first two lines after his emergence late in the 2025-26 campaign.
All of these factors could leave Cuylle as the odd man out, with a possibility of his overall usage decreasing compared to last season.
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The 2026-27 season will be a significant one for Cuylle to solidify himself as part of the Rangers' future plans given that he's entering the final year of his two-year, $7.8 million contract and is in need of a new contract extension.
Scoring 20 goals each of the past two seasons, Cuylle has proven he's capable of being a scoring threat to go along with his physical style of play and reliable two-way game.
Now, it's about Cuylle showing more consistency, which would allow him to take that next step the organization and fans have all been waiting for.
