Yesterday I had written three articles. The first two were posted yesterday and the third one I was going to hold on to until Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. But with the conflicting reports out of the major NYC papers yesterday regarding buyouts of Chris Drury, Wojcek Wolski and Sean Avery, I had to make a few changes.
I had written yesterday that I thought the Rangers should keep the captain before Jesse Spector of the NY Daily News wrote on twitter that he had a source close to the Rangers saying that Drury was told by Ranger brass that he was going to be bought out when the buyout period starts in the middle of next week and that Wolski and Avery were not going to be bought out. While I still think that the Rangers should just do the reverse with the exception of Avery, I tossed that article out of the window and I'm just going to go with what the Rangers are likely to do from here on out regarding the Drury buyout and impending FA.
First and foremost the Rangers need to get Dubi, Callahan, Anisimov, Sauer and Boyle under contract. Currently the Rangers have 18.4 million dollars in cap space with 13 players under contract with just under 41 million invested. The Drury buyout adds 3.33 million in space plus the rise in the salary cap ceiling so the Rangers are going to have roughly 24 million in cap space come July 1.
The first thing I do is offer Dubinsky a back loaded 3 year, 11 million contract so he gets nice raises every year and Callahan 4 years at 16 million. The only tie-up I can foresee and more so with Dubinsky is in years. The last thing Ranger fans want to see is Dubinsky signing a long term, 5 years plus contract and not living up to it or being constantly injured. Especially with all of Sather's bad contracts gone except for the one sitting in Hartford.
For the record I never considered Boogaards contract a "bad contract." Was it a little long? Yeah, maybe by a year or two but I never had a problem with the 1.6 million that he was getting. Derek Boogaard's job was to protect Marian Gaborik and he was being paid handsomely to do that. He never reached the potential in NY that really made him a star playing for the Wild, but before he died it sounded like he was really determined to prove to the Rangers that he was worth a roster spot next season.
RIP Boogaard, the hockey world will miss you.
Getting back on track. I would like to see Anisimov get signed for about 1.5 mil per and Sauer to about a million per over 2-3 years for both. Boyle is a little bit of an enigma to me. I would offer just a 1 year, 1 mil dollar deal just to prove that he isn't an inconsistent player before I offered bigger money next offseason.
Sather isn't going to buy out Drury to bank cap space for next year. He's going to go after Richards hard just hopefully not to the point where his contract turns into Drury 2.0. While Richards isn't going to be the savior to the Rangers he goes a LONG way to serious cup contention. Honestly was Boston a better team than the Rangers this year? I don't think the Rangers are that far away from a cup as other fans and bloggers make it sound, its just unfortunate for the Rangers that the division they play in right now is the toughest in the east. This team can do it, and the cup run may be closer than everyone thinks.
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