Quick NYR cap clarification

Before starting, all numbers and salaries or courtesy of capgeek.com. Disclaimer: I'm not a professional capologist so some info below might be inaccurate.

There was some question Wednesday morning about the recall of Tim Erixon up to the Rangers without anybody being sent back the other way and how the Rangers could still be cap compliant. For those who may not know, the NHL collective bargaining agreement offers teams cap relief for players on teams on long term injured reserve. In layman's terms it allows teams to go a little over the salary cap to fill roster spots for injured players. As of this writing, early Friday morning 12/16/11, after the recall of Tim Erixon, the Rangers currently sit 23K over the 64.3 million dollar cap ceiling. The Rangers placed Marc Staal on LTIR sometime in late October-early November. Once Marc Staal comes off long term injured reserve the Rangers must make moves to get below the 64.3 million dollar ceiling, which shouldn't be a problem.

Rupp's back, so who sits?

Andrew Gross of the Bergen Record reported this morning from the Rangers AM skate that forward Mike Rupp, out since October 25 with a torn meniscus has been cleared for contact and could play as soon as Saturday with the Rangers out west in Phoenix. So the question is who sits? Well, Rupp has been for the most part an "everyday" player over his career unlike Boogaard was in the sense that Boogaard would only play 45-60 games a year when you needed to add toughness to the lineup. I would be hesitant to send John Mitchell back to the Whale given how well Hagelin has played on that line with Boyle. So of course it comes back down to Christensen and Avery. Of course, the Ranger fan in me says that the Rangers should be doing everything in their power to get Christensen off the roster but I think its going to be Avery. The Rangers would have one too many guys who drop the gloves and would somewhat limit the Rangers offense.

If I were Torts, I would scratch Prust for a few games and get him healthy again. It's terribly obvious that all the bumps and bruises he takes have added up and greatly limited his effectiveness to the team. He is not the same guy who was all over the ice for the Rangers last season and awarded the Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award.

Good, Bad, Ugly: Rangers keep rolling, win 6-1 over Florida

The Good: Yet another complete game by the Rangers tonight, alot of good to take away from tonights game. Brad Richards opened the scoring with a power play goal at 11:40 of the first period taking a cross-ice pass at the Florida blueline from Callahan, and Richards who faked a slap shot, got Panther goalie Jose Theodore to move awkwardly to his right and Richards beat Theodore under his armpit for a 1-0 lead. Artem Anisimov made to 2-0 towards the end of the first period on yet another power play goal. Set up by a beautiful cross ice pass from Stralman to Anisimov, as well as a couple Panthers chasing the puck and getting caught out of position, Artie passed the puck over to Christensen who shot it into Theodore's pads but the rebound came right back out to Anisimov for the easy rebound goal at 17:27.

The fun didn't stop in the second period. With Brandon Prust serving the end of his penalty, Derek Stepan took the puck from coast to coast, putting a deke on Panthers rookie defenseman Gudbranson, and beat Theodore high glove as Prust's penalty expired to stretch the Ranger lead to 3-1. The Rangers made it 4-1, set up by Hagelin being able to negate an icing. The puck found its way to John Mitchell in the bottom of the circle who shot the puck into Theodore, but a big juicy rebound came all the way out to Eminger in the high slot who blasted a shot by Theodore high blocker side. The Rangers made it 5-1 following more hard work by the GAS line particularly from Stepan. Stepan raced up ice, took a hit from a Panther defenseman, got right back up with the puck, found Anisimov for a one timer which found its way to Theodore who left a big rebound at the top of the crease between Florida defenseman Kennedy's legs for Marian Gaborik who does not miss from that close. The Rangers closed the scoring just 55 seconds later set up by a pass from Gaborik to Stepan at center ice who passed to Del Zotto at the Florida blueline. He rifled a shot at Theodore, who left another big juicy rebound chance for Stepan between the hashmarks who also doesn't miss from that close to make it 6-1.

Scott Clemmensen relieved Jose Theodore to start the third period.

The Bad: The Rangers lone negative mark against them came at 18:07 of the second period, 40 seconds after Anisimov made it 2-0 Rangers. Erik Gudbranson scored the first goal of his NHL career. After a few seconds of the puck pinballing around in the Rangers zone, the puck found Kris Versteeg along the side boards, who passed the puck back to Gudbranson who blasted the puck by Lundqvist high glove off the crossbar. Not much else went wrong from the Rangers tonight.

The Ugly: Admittedly, I did not watch the third period due to connectivity problems with NHL Gamecenter Live, but it seemed like the Rangers did a good job clogging up the neutral zone and not allowing the Panthers to establish momentum to try and mount a comeback. I'm also running out of good things to say about the Rangers. It was a good and dominating win tonight against a first place team and one of the early surprise teams in the NHL, although one has to wonder how Florida got there with Jose Theodore as their starting goaltender.

I don't remember a time where I've been prouder to call myself a Ranger fan. How could anyone not love this team?

Good, Bad, Ugly: Rangers get off the skid, beat Buffalo 4-1

The Good: Rangers special teams ruled the roost in the second period with two shorthanded goals.  Hagelin with the first goal, starting with a nice pass by Eminger along the glass which wound up right on Hagelin's stick who zoomed up along left wing with Dubinsky on a 2 on 2, and with the defenseman cheating slightly toward Dubinsky, Hagelin roofed it over Enroth's glove hand as he was going to his pads. The Rangers second goal was simply a case of hard work on Callahan's part, picking off Christian Ehroff's pass at the point, running down ice, and with his back turned to Ehroff somehow sneaks the puck under Enroth's pads. The Rangers kept rolling in the third period on Hagelin's second of the night, Biron left the puck off for Del Zotto behind the net who quickly passed the puck left wing to Hagelin while the Sabres were in the middle of a line change and Hagelin beat Enroth again with a well placed wrister to the glove side. Gaborik completed the scoring at 17:26 of the third period with a PP goal after Mitchell leaves Gaborik the puck in the high slot and Gaborik lays into a shot and beats Enroth high glove off the crossbar for his 14th of the year.

The Bad: Buffalo's lone goal tied the game up at 1, following a bad turnover by Gaborik at Buffalo's blueline, Vanek raced up ice and following a give and go with Pominville, Vanek blasted a shot past Biron 64 seconds after the first Ranger goal. Gaborik was subsequently benched by Torts for the remainder of the second period.

The Ugly: I hope the injury bug that plagued the Rangers last season isn't starting to come out of hibernation. Hopefully McDonagh and Anisimov are OK. McDonagh came back but Artie did not so we'll see tomorrow for the Ranger game against Florida back in NYC if both guys are able to play. The Rangers controlled the play for most of the first period but were unable to bury one. I thought the Rangers may have been a little fortunate to be ahead after the second period, following a couple short handed Ranger goals. As we like to see, the Rangers were able to step on the throat of their opponent in the third period, shut down Buffalo's offense and put in two insurance goals of their own. The Rangers are back at it again tomorrow night against the southeast division leading Florida Panthers.

How awesome is Carl Hagelin?!?!?!

More re-alignment thoughts...

(screenshot pulled from sportsline.com)

In addtion to my re-alignment idea that I posted here not too long ago, there seems to be another (and probably better) idea that was shown on Hockey Night in Canada during the games on Saturday night shown above. What is proposed above is a different twist than what I had posted for the Eastern Conference that moved Nashville east and Winnipeg obviously back to the west. I had 2 divisions of 8 and 7 teams in each conference and an unbalanced schedule. What I don't think people are taking into account is whether the Coyotes are going to be playing hockey in Glendale next year. The city itself has no intention of pumping more money into the franchise and will likely be moved very soon if not next season. What throws the wrench into all this is the underground talk of adding a franchise somewhere in eastern half of Canada. There really isn't anything the NHL is going to do to make everyone happy.

Personally, I can't understand why the NHL would want to move Detroit to the Eastern Conference, despite their longstanding rivalries with the Blackhawks and the Avalanche. It would be one thing if it made geographical sense but it obviously doesn't. The NHL may truly have no choice but to go to four divisions and slightly increase every teams travel across the country to keep it "fair."

State of the Rangers: December Edition

It would be quite easy to sit here and marvel at the amount of wins the Rangers have put up just 28% of this still very young season but however there are a few loose ends that need tying up.

First things first on the injury front, we heard some new fresh news with the health of Marc Staal. He talked to reporters after doing some light skating with coaches on Thursday. It's good enough news that Staal is able to start skating to begin with. He also said that his return is quite 'a ways away' and didn't want to put a definite timetable on when he could return. I did speculate with little knowledge of the situation on twitter that Staal might be back in time for the Winter Classic, but now I think we are looking at sometime late February-early March. Staal was ordered by doctors to shutdown from physical activity earlier this season which he admitted did a number as far as his conditioning goes. Once he is cleared by doctors to resume working out and getting his conditioning to the level it needs to be, barring any setbacks which would probably sideline him for the year, I think we'll get a better sense of where he is as far as a timetable for return.

Tis the season for trade rumors. Last week we were treated to the first big trade rumor of the season and to no one's surprise the Rangers were right in the thick of things. However one has to decide whether it is such a good idea to break up the Rangers right now given how well they have played since Halloween. We all know that NJ product and Anaheim Ducks winger, Bobby Ryan was the center of attention in the hockey world given that the Ducks were ready to trade a 24 year old kid with three 30 goal seasons already under his belt. Looking at this from a Rangers standpoint, I'm all for trading away Dubinsky for a guy of Ryan's caliber, but it was what else the Rangers had to throw in to satisfy Ducks GM Bob Murray's demands. Originally when this story blew up, there was report thrown out that the Ducks were demanding a top 6 center, top 4 defenseman and a high draft pick/prospect. Immediately, the Rangers top prospect Chris Kreider, who is currently in his junior season playing for Boston College was thrown into the trade talks, and I believe this is what put the brakes (at least in the minds of Ranger fans) on the team acquiring Ryan. The Rangers have invested far too much time already waiting on Kreider to sign a pro contract to simply trade him away a season before he's likely to leave school for the NHL. However, the opposite side to this is that Bobby Ryan already is what you expect Kreider to be a couple seasons from now however Ryan comes with a much higher cap hit than Kreider will have for the next 3-4 seasons. With the Rangers playing so well at the moment, why get greedy? They've waited this long....

Which brings me to the enigma known as Brandon Dubinsky. Doober is still sitting on one goal this year, however he's been setting up his teammates for some wonderful goals as well. You can see the Rangers for the past couple games have been trying to force him the puck to get him going but it obviously hasn't been working. My one and only theory on Dubinsky is that there's little pressure on him to score goals this year. Last season, Gaborik got hurt very early last season, followed by Callahan going out twice from injuries. Dubinsky stepped up to the plate in Callahan's absence and even when Gaborik came back and only scored goals in bunches, Dubinsky was that force that drove the Rangers into the playoffs last season. Now that Gaborik is in the middle of a career season with Stepan and Anisimov reaping the rewards of being on that line and with the addition of Brad Richards and his chemistry with Ryan Callahan. The only way to get him going is probably a swift kick in the ass from Torts although if it hasn't happened already it probably won't if the Rangers keep consistently winning.

Finally, the HBO cameras will be starting to film the Rangers on Monday 12/5. With the Rangers currently rolling through their schedule, I hope the cameras don't become a distraction.

Good, Bad, Ugly: Rangers ride the Lightning, win 4-2

The Good: Rebound goals were the name of the game tonight, all the Ranger goals scored by Fedotenko, Anisimov and the game winner by Stepan were due to second chances the Rangers created in front of the net and terrible rebound control by Tampa goalie Garon. Also quite fitting that Brad Richards scoring into the empty net to secure a win. Besides an excellent penalty kill by the Rangers after Callahan took a lazy hooking call just 17 seconds after Stepan scored, there really is little else to commend the Rangers on tonight but thanks to the defense and world class goaltending, the Rangers just manage to find ways to win games. Tampa had several really good scoring chances but the Rangers are getting all the bounces to go their way.

The Bad: The Rangers didn't bring their best game to Tampa tonight but eventually found a way to win. Steve Downie scored the first goal of the game just 84 seconds in with a rip from the blue line that beat Lundqvist who was very upset at either himself or Stepan who may have partially screened Hank when the shot came in. The second Lightning goal scored by former Ranger draft pick Tom Pyatt was a shot that Hank would like to have back as Pyatt beat him 5 hole.

The Ugly: Honestly, tonight's game was strange and quite boring to watch at times. It took the refs 53 minutes to call a penalty which the Rangers received and did little with. The Rangers just keep rolling along despite not playing their best against a trapping Lightning team. The Rangers fly home tonight and are going to have their hands full once again when they faceoff against the Leafs on Monday at MSG.