A fair deal for Stralman would be 4 years at $3.5-3.6M. He isn't going to bring offense from the backend, and that is an opportunity cost the team knows it has to incur with him playing 2nd pair minutes.
There isn't anything to complain about this guy. If it is such that he comes in at a mid $3M cap hit, then that's great. But Stralman will get term and more money on the open market.
If you look at the teams that were either middling, or didn't make the playoffs, you will see that one thing that they all had in common was a lack of defensive depth, and more importantly defensemen that play a mistake free game. Anton wasn't that player until he came to the Rangers, and now this new system makes his life a lot easier and less grueling than Torts' system.
So there has to be a give and take. But Anton will get a ton more money in the open market. 3rd pair D Andrew Ference cashed in big time. Ed Jovonovski got a 4 year retirement contract. There are teams in the playoff picture right now that could use an Anton Stralman, and that means there will be a bidding process for his services, and that means that he is going to hit pay dirt.
My guess is 4 years $18M on the low end, 6 years $27M on the highend. If Andrew MacDonald can get 6 years at $5M, Anton is cracking term at $4+ easily.