Rangers Biggest Offseason Decisions Will Be On Own Players Not Buying Others

The New York Rangers had their breakup day today as players collected there things and met with the media heading into the offseason.  As interesting as what they had to say was, the more interesting thing is to look at which of those players will not be coming back to the club come this fall.  There will be a lot of talk about free agency in the weeks and months to come, but the decisions made about the players that are already here will determine how much money and how many roster spaces there are to be filled by players not currently on the roster or in the organization.  On the NHL roster the Rangers had six restricted and four unrestricted free agents.  Along with those ten players there are the cases of Chris Drury, Wojtek Wolski, Sean Avery and Erik Christensen to consider when looking at the makeup of next year’s roster.

There is a lot of talk about adding different pieces to the current core of players, but none of that can be done until the Rangers make decisions on all 14 of those guys that are already here.  Of the restricted free agents, all but Matt Gilroy should be a lock to be back next season, and Gilroy is apparently going to get the option to come back at a reduced rate.  In terms of the unrestricted free agents, Ruslan Fedotenko is the only one that I would suspect gets offered another contract, though Vinny Prospal remains a possibility.

The question of buyouts will loom large for the organization this summer both in terms of the talent and players they could be removing from the team, but the amount of money it could potentially free up under the cap to let them be more aggressive in adding talent.  The two players that have the most cap space to be gained by being bought out are Wojtek Wolski and Chris Drury.  I already took a look at the implications of buying out Wolski this summer so I will focus instead on Chris Drury and his albatross of a contract. 

Drury does add value to the Rangers on and off the ice, but certainly not at the level of a $7.05 million hit to the salary cap.  There are questions about his knee and how healthy it truly is and simply the fact he is a fourth line player at this point in his career.  The question is whether the Rangers organization would buy out the current captain of their franchise to save 3.33 million this year and cost 1.67 million for the 2012-13 season.  I am not counting on them doing that unless they plan on making a huge move this summer on Brad Richards and absolutely need the space.  I think the respect for Drury within the organization is too great for that to happen, but it might be the biggest decision the organization makes in determining just how different the team will be next season. 

Rangers Extend Tortorella Three Years

According to Larry Brooks of the New York Post, the New York Rangers have extended the contract of head coach John Tortorella for three more seasons.  Originally Tortorella was to have his contract expire after this season.  There are positives and negatives to Tortorella, like any coach, but the job he has did this year certainly earned him more time at the helm.   

The 2010-11 Rangers overachieved as they continued the transition from the old way of buying big names to growing our own players into NHL pieces with the final goal to be building a championship contender.  I am not sure that Tortorella will be the guy that ultimately takes them to the final level, but for now he is showing that he can get the most out of some inferior pieces.  Now the challenge will be to meet the rising expectation levels the team will face next year or he will quickly go from coach helping a team overachieve to a coach that has us continually battling for 8th to either miss the playoffs or leave early.

Pride In What Rangers Accomplished Outweighs Disappointment of Season Ending

It is now the morning after the New York Rangers season has ended and while it is too early for reflection on the season as a whole, there can be some on the series that just ended against the Washington Capitals.  The pain of the loss is still there, but so is the pride of how the team played as a whole and knowing how close they were to making it a much different series.  The final series score is not indicative of how close this series was from game to game.  The Rangers certainly had their chances to have this be a completely different series, but in the end it was a 4-1 series defeat.  Within games this team showed the grit and determination they made us proud with all season long.  The reality of it is that they just are not there yet, but it is coming.

This year was always about the future instead of the now and this series showed that not only to be true, but gave many of the Rangers’ young players a taste of what playoff hockey is like.  There is no way to quantify what a tough series like the Rangers just played does for the development of Stepan, Sauer, McDonagh, Anisimov in their growth as NHL players.  Possibly the most impressive thing about the team in the series is that the young players played much like they did in the regular season and were not consumed by the stage.  That alone speaks volumes about them and why there is so much hope for the future.

The season and the series also showed holes in the process of building this team into a legitimate contender to hoist the Stanley Cup.  The Rangers lack of elite skill offensively is not something they let derail them during the regular year, but it was clearly a factor in this series. The Capitals had their best players contribute and the Rangers got little from their supposed game changing forward; Marian Gaborik.  The process will move on and the Rangers young players will continue to get better, and the organization will either have to hope some of the players that were here like Stepan, Anisimov, Callahan and Dubinsky turn into game changers or they will have to add some to the core they have.

The day after the season ends is never one of happiness for the team or the fans, but for the first time since in many years there can be a sense of satisfaction in the season the team put together and hope for the future with this group.  A team that was in transition and a question mark to even make the playoffs incorporated rookies into key positions and they all established themselves as legitimate NHL contributors.  To fight through all the injuries they had and the lack of elite talent on the roster while making the playoffs and pushing the Capitals is an accomplishment beyond what I expected for this team coming into the year.  It was there heart and determination that led them to overachieve, and when you have a team that plays that way, everyone can get behind them because they respect how they go about their business.

The rebuilding process is still going and the movement to homegrown Rangers is far from done with the prospects yet to come.  If the fans have patience this will continue to be a team that is worthy of their support and the reward will be them coming out on the other side of a series like this down the road.

Video: Tim Thomas Saves Bruins With Phenomenal Pad Save on Gionta

The headlines will show Nathan Horton as having scored the game-winning goal in the second overtime, but if not for this phenomenal pad save by goalie Tim Thomas the game would have been over before Horton ever got the chance.  The save was indicative of how Tim Thomas plays goalie in that he was extremely aggressive on the odd-man rush and then he had to battle to get back to stone Brian Gionta.

Rangers Eliminated By Capitals With 3-1 Loss In Game 5

The New York Rangers entered Game 5 looking to stave off elimination and put the pressure back on the shoulders of the favorite Washington Capitals.  In a season in which the Rangers have fought through adversity and overcome long odds multiple times, today it was just not their day as they fell 3-1.  All season the team has put forth great efforts as a unit built on heart and not talent, but this one saw a team that looked broken and unable to mount any real fight to threaten the Capitals. 

The effort was disappointing given how Game 4 ended and with the various proclamations for how ready the team would be to go today.  They simply weren’t and the Capitals took advantage.  If anything the result of this game should have been a lot worse than 3-1.  Today was probably the most lopsided of all the games of the series.  I would not dwell on today’s performance as it was not indicative of the team or the year as a whole.  This team is made up of a group of fighters and gave their fans much to be proud of throughout the season.  Losing is never easy to deal with, but the taste left as this season ends is much better than the last two years because of the hope for the future.  The look to the future will start here tomorrow and last for the offseason as we look back at 2010-11 season and look forward to 2011-12 with everything that concerns the Rangers.

As for the game, the Capitals dominated the first other than the first shift in which the Rangers had chances to score but failed to finish.  From that point on the period was played predominately in the New York zone and saw the Capitals outshoot them 13-6 and chances were even more lopsided than that.  Mike Green the first goal of the game while on the power-play at 5:59 of the opening period.  Green took an Alex Ovechkin pass and from a sharp angle scored by sliding it off Dan Girardi.  Green’s play was likely going to slide through the crease, but Girardi in trying to dive back to protect the net had the puck go off his knees behind Lundqvist.  The goal was the first in the first period of the series.  

The Capitals made it 2-0 at the 7:04 mark of the second period when Ovechkin streaked down the right side of the ice and beat Lundqvist with a backhander.  The play was a beauty by Ovechkin as he blew past Marc Staal and made no mistake on the finish. 

Alexander Semin made it 3-0 Capitals with under four minutes to play and Wojtek Wolski would get a meaningless goal with just 31.5 seconds left to allow the Rangers to avoid the shutout.

• The disappointment of Marian Gaborik stands out as he failed to rise to the occasion of the big game yet again.  The Rangers need to find out what this guy is made of and either fix whatever his problem was this year or look to move him because his personality did not fit the mold of the rest of this team this year.
• Dan Girardi played with tremendous guts today coming back from a severely dislocated finger in which he had to take a needle just to play in order to try and help the team

Rangers Change Lines Not Personnel for Game 5

Going into their do or die Game 5 matchup with the Capitals, head coach John Tortorella is keeping the same personnel in the lineup, but tinkering with how they combine.  According to Andrew Gross of Ranger Rants, the offensive lines seen to close Game 4 will be the ones used to start Game 5 and not those which were announced prior to Game 4.  The lines were as follows:

Fedotenko - Dubinsky - Gaborik
Avery - Boyle - Prust
Wolski - Anisimov - Stepan
Prospal - Christensen - Drury

The change is a swap of Prospal and Wolski, which is somewhat surprising given that Wolski only played 9:40 in Game 4 while Prospal played 26:04.  The move could signify that Wolski is getting another chance to use his skill in a more important role or that Tortorella might ride his veterans more and play Christensen and Drury more while the young guys take a secondary role in the elimination game. 

On defense everyone will remain the same so Steve Eminger is out again.

Henrik Lundqvist Snubbed In Vezina Trophy Finalists

The NHL announced the three finalists for the Vezina trophy this afternoon and Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist was not amongst them.  The finalists were Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins, Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators and Roberto Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks. 
On the season Lundqvist recorded a 36-27-5 record with a 2.28 goals against average and .923 save percentage.  Lundqvist led the league with 11 shutouts on the season.
Lundqvist and/or Carey Price both would have been more deserving choices than Luongo, but being on the President's Cup winning team was important to the voters.

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Rumor: Mats Zuccarello Suffered Broken Hand Last Night

The New York Rangers sent Mats Zuccarello down to the Connecticut Whale this week so that he could get valuable playing time in a large role during the playoffs.  According to reports this morning that plan has been foiled by a fractured hand Zuccarello suffered in the Whale's 5-4 loss to Portland last night.  This development is not unlike when the Rangers sent Michael Del Zotto down to the Whale following the trade deadline and watched him break a finger.  The injury is likely to keep Zuccarello out of both the rest of the Whale season and the World Championships.  Zuccarello showed flashes of promise in his first season in North America and will look to improve on that next season.  Consistency and not skill was the issue for Zuccarello who had some excellent games and then many where he was a limited factor.  Finishing around the net is something that he, like many Rangers players, could use work on for next season.  His familiarity with the North American style of play is something that will help him immensely preparing for next season as compared to this year.

In the meantime the Whale will look to rebound in the series against Portland, which they currently trail 3-2.

Rangers Can Beat The Odds Again, Beat The Capitals

Being against the odds is nothing new for the 2010-11 New York Rangers, so why should their first round playoff series be any different.  Before the season the team wasn’t supposed to make the playoffs.  During their second half losing streak they were supposed to fold and admit their first half was nothing more than a fluke.  Going into the regular season finale against the Devils the odds were against them of even making the playoffs.  The Rangers have defied the odds multiple times this season and now they will have to do it again with three straight wins against Washington if they want to keep playing.

In each of the previous scenarios the team has responded by showing heart, determination, and character.  It is from that basis that until the Rangers season is officially over that this team cannot be counted out of anything.  There is no doubt the climb is uphill and steep against the more talented Capitals.  At the same time, the Rangers have had an opportunity to win three of the four games in this series and be the ones looking to clinch on Saturday instead of the team looking to stay alive. 

There are positives and negatives to the reality they could have easily won three of the first four games instead of lost them.  The fact they are in every game says they can compete at the same level as this team is a good thing.  On the negative side that they have been unable to close out two third period leads is certainly disheartening, but also goes against the way the team played all season long.  The power play being 1-for-18 in the series is something that has cost them at least one game in the series.  It could also be said that when you are that bad, sometimes you are just due to get one.

Any positive in the series can be turned into a negative and vice versa, but with the way the team has competed all season, until they are done, we have to look at the positive side and believe in their chances.  There is no doubt that come Game 5, with their back against the wall, the New York Rangers will come out fighting.  It is who they are.  It is what they do.  Saturday does not afford the Rangers the chance to win the series, but if they can get that win in Washington, then they force the Capitals back to the Garden where holding home ice means an anything can happen Game 7. 

That scenario might seem like a longshot after the heartbreak of Game 4, but remember that these same Capitals blew a 3-1 lead against the Montreal Canadiens last season and even came back from 3-1 down to beat us two seasons ago.  Playoff series are in large measure about momentum and with a win on Saturday the Rangers have the ability to swing momentum and let doubt creep into the minds of the Capitals.  This team has not quit all season and until they are officially out of the playoffs you will not find me quitting on them.  No team has enjoyed being the underdog more than this squad, so maybe they have the Capitals right where they want them.