The 2009
offseason will be an extremely important one for the New York Rangers. 11 of the 21 players on the Rangers NHL Roster are either Unrestricted or Restricted Free Agents come July 1st. Some of these players should be brought back to play for the
Blueshirts, and then on the other hand, others should be let go. But how we think and how Glen
Sather thinks are way different, as we have seen in the past, so I cannot assume anything. I am just presenting the scenario and giving my opinion.
So, I will start with the cap situation. As we know, the
NHL's salary cap is currently at $56,700,000. This amount is expected to be lowered by the 2010-2011 season, which will ultimately affect any long-term signings Glen
Sather and the Rangers have in mind. Anyway, as of now, the Rangers salary cap payroll is $57,456,343, which is obviously greater than the actual league cap itself, but that is allowed after the trade deadline. Now I mentioned before that 11 players are free agents come this
offseason, well after all of those players become free agents, the payroll decreases to only $42,096,310. This leaves New York with about $14,500,000 in cap room to either make
resignings or bring in other free agents from around the league and offer them new contracts. This is not an
extremely terrible situation, but it definitely is not one of the better ones when you look at the players that make up much of the payroll. Henrik
Lundqvist, Scott Gomez, Chris
Drury, Wade Redden, Michal
Rozsival, Markus
Naslund, Sean Avery, Marc
Staal and Dan
Girardi take up about 41 million of the 56.7 million allowed.
Here is the list of Free Agent's Come July 1st:
Nikolai
Zherdev (
RFA)
Nikolai
Antropov (UFA)
Lauri
Korpikoski (
RFA)
Fredrik Sjostrom (
RFA)
Brandon
Dubinsky (
RFA)
Ryan Callahan (
RFA)
Blair
Betts (UFA)
Colton Orr (UFA)
Derek Morris (UFA)
Paul Mara (UFA)
Stephen
Valiquette (UFA)
I believe that Ryan Callahan and Brandon
Dubinsky are the top two priorities off that list. Both should be brought back to New York, as Cally and
Dubi are young and inexpensive, but still have a lot of talent to be developed down the road. These are the guys that Glen
Sather should be considering locking up for quite a while.
I will start with Callahan. Cally obviously had his best career year in 2008-09, scoring a career high 22 goals and notching 18 assists, which totals for 40 points. Ryan was probably the "best" Ranger behind
Lundqvist in the regular season, and caught the attention of head coach John
Tortorella early, who predicted that Callahan will be a 30 goal scorer next year.
Another player that Torts has showed some real interest in is Brandon
Dubinsky. Brandon did not have his best year this year(13-28-41), but that is a very common theme for sophomore players in this league. If resigned, I am sure
Tortorella will make this kid into a great player in the future, especially because he will be able to work him hard in training camp.
So those are probably the first two moves I would make if I was Glen
Sather, but again, that is just me. The rest of the cap room is left in the front office's hands to deal with. The other priorities for this team is to get not another goal scorer, but A goal scorer, one that will be consistent with their play. And I also feel that this team lacks a tough
defenseman, so that is also something to be looked at by Slats and Company. Overall, I would expect the Rangers to be very active in this upcoming
offseason.