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By Zach Schiff  February 1, 2010, at 12:32 am  You know who was good? Olli Jokinen from 2005 through 2007.
You know who isn’t that good anymore? Olli Jokinen.
Of course, if the rumors are true, and Olli Jokinen is about to be a Ranger (along with Brandon Prust for Chris Higgins and Ales Kotalik), then he becomes the 3rd highest-scoring Ranger, behind Marian Gaborik and Vaclav Prospal.
And yes, he is a 1st-line center who can play with Prospal at left wing and Gaborik at right wing.
But the big thing is that Kotalik is making $3M for not only this year but the next 2 seasons as well. Jokinen’s cap hit is $5.25M, and he is an unrestricted free agent this summer. So the Rangers effectively clear $3M off the books for the next two seasons.
(Higgins is making $2.25M this year, but that’s unrelated because he’d be a UFA after this season, and the Rangers probably weren’t inviting him back for another campaign. The only thing that his salary has to do with this is that it’s an even exchange, just over $5M for just over $5M. Prust is making $500,000 only.)
Maybe Jokinen isn’t as good as his two seasons when he averaged over a point per game, but to add more offense this year while clearing $3M for the next two years is a good move.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t address the real problems of the Rangers cap issues – that would involve moving any combination of Wade Redden, Chris Drury, and Michal Rozsival. But the moves are going to have to be made before the Olympic break because there is only 1 game before the March 3 trade deadline.
By Zach Schiff January 25, 2010, at 9:36 am I will update later today about the Rangers game in Montreal. For the record, it’s the 1st time I’ve seen them lose in an opposing building (not including the Nassau Coliseum). I saw them win in Nashville, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Montreal before the 6-0 disaster I witnessed first-hand Saturday night.
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Do you know the differences in Dan Carcillo and Donald Brashear? Carcillo has 6 goals and 6 assists this year; Brashear had no goals and 1 assist. Carcillo dresses for games while Brashear stays nice and clean in a suit and tie. Carcillo wins fights (his record this year is 7-3-2, including beating Marian Gaborik and losing to Sean Avery last Thursday) while Brashear skates away from confrontation. In fact, the last fight Brashear won was against Jared Boll of Columbus three days before Thanksgiving. Brashear’s record this year stands at 3-4-2.
As for Brashear’s claims that he wouldn’t fight Carcillo – “I don’t even fight a guy like Carcillo. I don’t think he’s in my league.” – and then his claims that he isn’t a guy who only goes out and fights staged fights… well, what? Do you fight everyone or will you only fight heavyweights?
“If I would have played” Gaborik would not have been fought by Carcillo, Brashear said. Oh yeah? If you’re out there fighting people like Matt Carkner, Eric Boulton, Eric Godard, and Shawn Thornton, is that really a deterrent for people like Carcillo? Will he not get under Gaborik’s skin just because there is a chance that Brashear might lose a fight to Aaron Asham or Ian Laperriere?
Did Brashear’s presence in the first half of the season stop any team from running over Henrik Lundqvist? Were they afraid he was going to go after Ilya Kovalchuk or Johan Hedberg, or did they know that, no matter what, he would fight Boulton and leave everyone else alone?
Like what Carcillo did or not, he got the Flyers an extra 2 points that night. He got the best player on the team to thrown down his gloves and fight him. He threw an entire team off their game, because they then stopped trying to score and started looking for revenge. The only person nearly capable of getting under a team’s skin like that on the Rangers’ roster is Avery. Not Brashear.
Guess what, Donald. Carcillo might not be in your league for long – because he’ll still be in the NHL for the next decade.
By Zach Schiff January 20, 2010, at 2:29 am A week ago, I never thought there’d be a day when Aaron Voros and Christopher Higgins both score in Rangers uniforms.
Well, here it is. That Voros goal was very nice, but the thing that was excellent was the Brian Boyle pass – through traffic, an excellent pass for a primary assist.
Not much I can add here that you won’t find elsewhere, but it’s huge when 8 different Rangers can find the net – and none of them have the initials MG.
I’ve been saying all along that the Rangers need offense besides Marian Gaborik, and that the Rangers need to hit the other team and stand up for themselves.
Tonight, they did that. If the players that don’t score often – Callahan, Dubinsky, Drury, Lisin, Anisimov, Avery, Higgins … … … – can find ways to score, this team can be be a playoff team. If they go back to only having Gaborik and Vinny Prospal scoring, it will be a long offseason.
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Two emails in my inbox today from a site I used to write on. And I stopped, because it was ridiculous.
1) Should the Rangers trade for Vinny Lecavalier?
2) Should the Rangers buy-out Ales Kotalik?
No, they should not trade for Lecavalier. He is a decent player this year and was alright last year. What about in 8 years from now when he’s 38, has millions of dollars in the bank, a Stanley Cup ring already, and couldn’t care less about playing?
And buying out Kotalik? Scratch a man 3 straight games and this crap gets written. Do people really not have any other ideas in their heads?
There are at least 5 guys ahead of Kotalik in the Buy-Out Department, not the least of whom would be Vinny Lecavalier if they traded for him. Plus, if they buy out his contract, who would shoot the puck for the next 2 and a half seasons? Michal “Miss the Net” Rozsival? Wade “Pass First, Defense Later” Redden?
C’mon. Have something original to write… or work for the Jay Leno Show.
By Zach Schiff January 18, 2010, at 12:54 pm Next Saturday, I will be venturing into Montreal to see the second game of the Home & Home with the Canadiens. Okay, it’s a home-and-home with 2 other games in between, but still, it stands to be more intriguing than a home game against Tampa Bay and a game in Philadelphia.
So, which jersey should I wear?
Should I go with the autographed Dan Girardi jersey?
The autographed Sean Avery?
Superstar Marian Gaborik?
New addition to my collection Vinny Prospal?
I normally like to wear Sean Avery jerseys when I’m in other buildings.
I did it in Nashville last year about a month after the Rangers got him back on re-entry waivers, and a few fans yelled “Sloppy Seconds!” at me. To recap, I am not Sean Avery, I just wear the jersey. And the Rangers won that game.
I wore it in New Jersey amid death threats from the upper level (directed at me, my friends, and Scott Gomez, playing his first game in Jersey since signing with the Rangers). Those were quieted when the Rangers won the game.
I wore it in Philadelphia, where some kid tried to body check my friend. “How could you wear a Sean Avery jersey in Philly?” one cigarette-smoking man asked me. Well, the Rangers won that game.
And I wore it in Montreal on Super Bowl Sunday when the Giants beat the Patriots. As I was on the escalator, there was a man in a Mike Komisarek Habs jersey in front of me. We had an awkward silence, then discussed what it would be like to really date Elisha Cuthbert. The Rangers went down 3-0, then won that game 5-3.
Should I keep the tradition alive, or change things up?
By Zach Schiff January 13, 2010, at 12:28 am Can’t be any disappointed hockey fans out in the NY-NJ area tonight, from the 17,000 Ranger fans at MSG, to the 1,000 Devil fans at MSG, to the 4,000 Islander fans who routinely sell out the lower bowl on the Nassau Coliseum, to the 17,000 fans that the New Jersey Devils have accumulated since Aaron Broten first led them on the ice in 1982.
Yes, Bryan, the Rangers-Devils game was excellent, except for one thing – it underscored how bad the Rangers are at mustering offense. Henrik Lundqvist was great in stopping 45 shots – downright incredible on a few.
And I won’t bash Marty Brodeur as I normally would. Any time you stop 51 shots, you played great. Of course, the Rangers made it very easy for about 40 of those shots. He did make a few excellent saves, and while he didn’t do much on Marian Gaborik’s overtime-near-score, that save on Michal Rozsival with time running out in the extra period was good.
Shots from the boards, shots with no traffic in front, shots to Brodeur’s glove. C’mon! Do you really think a wrister from the left circle is going past Brodeur’s glove? You can tell me all you want about how many shots they had, and I will tell you until I’m blue in the face that it doesn’t matter if they’re 90% crappy shots.
And I guess that old hockey adage “If you shoot enough, one is bound to go in” was proven wrong tonight.
Remember March of 2007 when Rick DiPietro made, what, 56 saves in a shootout loss to the Rangers? The Rangers made him look like Jesus Christ that night – albeit he was clean-shaven, and Christ would wear #33 not #39. But they had so many awful, easy-to-save shots that it looked like nothing would get by him, and rarely anything did except for a goal in regulation and a Matt Cullen goal in the shootout.
Anyway, fast-paced, end-to-end action with good defense play that wasn’t boring. It was a very good game to watch and would’ve been sweeter with a Rangers’ win, but now the Rangers web site can say they are 9-1-3 in the last 13 games.
And I can’t even get mad at the shootout result. It would’ve been nce to have had a Ranger score, but they couldn’t, and Patrick Elias’ wrister that beat Lundqvist was awesome.
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Telling stat of the night brought to us by Versus and Jack Daniels Old No. 7: Marian Gaborik was 2-for-17 in shootouts going into tonight. Now, he is 2-for-18, around 11%. By comparison, Erik Christensen, Zach Parise, and Ales Kotalik are near (or over) 50%.
Why does John Tortorella keep putting Gaborik in? I know he’s a superstar, I know he’d the “stud” on the team, and I know he scored in the shootout in Atlanta, but he isn’t a breakaway artist.
Jaromir Jagr wasn’t. Gaborik isn’t either. Stick to Kotalik, Christensen, Vinny Prospal, Artem Anisimov, and maybe even Ryan Callahan. But keep Gaborik out of it until at least the 6th round.
Enver Lisin would’ve been nice to have seen pull some moves out of his bag. But alas, Donald Brashear needed to have his customary 8 shifts and 5:53 of ice time.
Hey, didn’t Lisin score in Atlanta?
By Zach Schiff January 4, 2010, at 11:46 pm :: My lead off today was going to be “Chris Higgins couldn’t score at a bar near Arizona State University” until about 90 seconds remained in the Rangers/Bruins game tonight.
Still, I guess even the fat mathlete can find the drunk sorority girl every now and then.
:: To the people who said the following regarding my Steve Rucchin jersey…
- “Isn’t Prospal number 20?”
- “It must be his own last name.”
… is this your first season watching the Rangers? Do you know know who the best – and only competent – second-line center on the Rangers since the lockout is? By the way, both Jason Krog and Freddy Sjostrom wore #20 between The Rucch and our favorite player named Vaclav.
I understand it’s an obscure jersey, but when you go to a lot of games, it’s nice to dig deep into the closet once in a while.
But to the guy in the Scott Gomez jersey… please… retire it.
:: Best jerseys of the night…
- Marco Sturm #19 German Olympic jersey
- Marc Savard # 33 Rangers jersey
:: Fun game tonight, and it was a relief from the 1-0 Bruin/Ranger games we’re used to, but it definitely got a little hazy in the 3rd period. My head still hurts from when I involuntarily hit it after Blake Wheeler scored to tie it 2-2.
:: Paging Sean Avery: Eventually, you’re going to have to score. You have still only scored in 2 games this year. I appreciate that in both games you scored 2 goals, but a 5th goal in forthcoming, no?
:: I know it’s a little premature, but I’d like to keep Erik Christensen with Brandon Dubinsky and Marian Gaborik when Prospal returns. Christensen has found his niche – playing with superstars like Gaborik, Sidney Crosby, and Ilya Kovalchuk – and it’s relieving to see him fitting in. When Prospal returns, have him center Ales Kotalik and Ryan Callahan. Have Avery play with Chris Drury and Artem Anisimov, and then have a 4th line that doesn’t do anything. I’m never one to speculate on line combinations, but that sounds good, no?
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