The Bread Man is coming to Broadway.

After all the maneuvering and all the fretting, the Rangers got their man by signing 27-year-old winger Artemi Panarin to a seven-year, $81.5 million deal at the opening of free agency on Monday. With an annual salary-cap hit just over $11.6 million, Panarin left money on the table from his former team, the Blue Jackets, and likely turned down bigger offers from the Islanders and Panthers.

But the electric righty-shot from a small town in Russia had made it clear that he always longed for the big city and the big stage. He peppered former Columbus team president John Davidson about his memories playing for the Rangers in the Garden, and on his visit this past week, he even mentioned Mark Messier’s accomplishment captaining the Stanley Cup-winning team of 1994. Then just a few months after Davidson took the job in New York, Panarin followed.

“When you see him play, the fans are going to enjoy it because of the style he has to his game. He can be electrifying at times,” Davidson said on a conference call Monday. “As we get this all going and young people see how he plays, I think it’ll be infectious. I think it’ll be infectious for the fans to watch. But again, everybody keep in mind, that this is a process. And we’re going through it, and he’s going to be part of it.

“These are pieces that fit a puzzle, and we are trying to get that puzzle completed the proper way as quickly as possible.”
This is the cherry on top of what has been one of the biggest offseasons in recent Rangers history.

General manager Jeff Gorton was able to obtain top-four righty-shot defenseman Jacob Trouba in a trade with the Jets, as an expensive new deal for the restricted free agent likely coming sometime soon. The club then took Kaapo Kakko with the No. 2-overall selection in the draft, the Rangers’ highest pick ever. They were also able to use some of their stockpiled draft picks — a second- and third-rounder — to trade for the rights to Harvard defenseman Adam Fox, who seems like he’s ready for the NHL. It also seems like the crop of recent prospects have matured rather well, especially Vitali Kravtsov, the No. 9-overall pick in 2018 who had a tremendous prospects camp last week up in Stamford, Conn.

And now Panarin is there to show them what it takes to be a star, having amassed 116 goals and 320 points in 322 career games, plus another nine goals and 26 points in 27 playoff games.

“When you put these pieces together, some of them pop sooner than others,” Davidson said. “We have a lot of youth. We want Artemi to be a part of this, and when these young players pop, he’s still going to be in his prime. And I think he’s excited about that. I just think it’s a win-win for him and for our hockey club.”

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Gorton still has quite a bit of work to do before the season starts, and that begins with addressing the future for Chris Kreider, entering the final year of his deal and likely to either be extended or traded before training camp in September. He also has unsigned restricted free agents in not just Trouba, but Pavel Buchnevich, Tony DeAngelo, and Brendan Lemieux.

But the plan to accelerate this rebuild — or, as Davidson is now calling it, “the build” — began with Panarin, the player they most coveted but with whom they had a clear idea of how high they would go with their offer.

“I think we had to draw a line,” Gorton said. “With all the players in the market, you go in knowing what the cost might be. Things happen, and you make your decisions.”

But just like so many things during this process, it worked out well for the Rangers. They got their man, and they think he’s the right player to help lead them back into contention.

“He’s a young man who always has smile on his face. He loves to score, he loves to win,” Davidson said. “I think he’s going to love everything about playing for the New York Rangers.”

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