Not sure how this would work cap wise, but it is an interesting thought…

The Rangers are discussing bring back not only Jarmoir Jagr on a two year deal but soon to be UFA Michael Nylander as well.

As for costs, the Rangers know they are going to probably have to offer Jagr 2 years (12-15 million) after what happened last time around.

As for Nylander they are going to try and sign him cheap (think Prospal)

I don’t like to speculate lines but I am hearing a forward corp for next season consisting of:

Gaborik
Kovalchuk
Jagr
Nylander
Drury
Prospal
Callahan
Dubinsky
Christensen

One of my sources is citing that the Rangers don’t want to waste Lundqvist’s prime and really give him an offense to work with.

team wise here is what I would want to see.

First Line: Kovalchuk – Nylander – Jagr
Second Line: Prospal – Christensen – Gaborik
Third Line: Drury – Dubinsky – Callahan
Fourth Line: Avery – Anisimov – Byers/Prust
Reserve: Boyle

Defense 1: Staal – Girardi
Defense 2: MDZ – Sauer/McDonagh
Defense 3: Gilroy – Sanguinetti
No Reserve Defenseman

I guess you can make the math work, but it’s not really realistic though. You’d have to make Rozsival, Redden, and Brashear just magically disappear off the roster AND expect a defense with 2 rookies, 2 kids with 1 year of experience, and 2 kids with less than 4 years of experience, to lead you to a championship…because thats what this team is supposed to be, a championship caliber team.

I don’t know…it would sure as hell be interesting though.

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Thoughts on this game…

Ryan Kesler was the best player on the ice for either team…what an amazing display.

Our goalie VASTLY outplayed theirs. Uncle Daddy was horrendous, and Miller was absolutely superb.

Where the f**k has this Chris Drury been? He’s been absolutely outstanding this entire Olympic tournament.

and finally….

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

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Henrik Lundqvist has pretty much said, just get me 3, and I will get you the win. So, ever wonder how that would work out? Let’s assume, for a second, that the Rangers were to score exactly 3 goals a game, never more, never less. And that shootouts/OT would end in a 50/50 split, with us getting the extra point half the time. How many points would we have if that were the case? 86.

86! If all we did was score 3 goals a game we would have the 4th best record in the entire NHL. Henrik is right, just get him those 3 goals. And today the Rangers did, and then some. In a do or die, fight for your life, playoff type game that likely will set the course for the trade deadline, the Rangers rallied from a 2-0 deficit to score 5 unanswered goals. The Rangers were really the better team for most of the game, Henrik gave up 2 very questionable, borderline soft goals, but made up for them by making a number of superb saves to go with them. The Rangers also rallied around their injured players by playing a very strong team oriented game that didn’t just revolve around getting Gaborik the puck and then getting the hell out of the way.

With the Olympics around the corner the Rangers have brought themselves back to a stones throw from the playoff picture, which is exactly where they needed to be. I don’t like the thought of tanking, and playoff hockey is where it is at, so the Rangers have done well for themselves in this short time span. With that said though, they need to get into the 6th or 7th spot to face the very beatable Devils or Sabres teams that will likely end up there. If they can do that, they have a damn good shot of making it to the 2nd round, and that’s where anything can happen.

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You know what I love about hockey? The fact that you can suffer a Hari-Kari esque wound, and only be listed as “questionable” for your next game. What a great sport.

The Rangers, playing in their other house of horrors arena, the other being the Bell Centre, played a very strong, very gritty type game against the defending Stanley Cup Champs in their own barn. They were without Gaborik and MDZ 4 minutes into the game, and they were without Rozsival for half the 2nd period. Somehow they still managed to take this game into O/T before Jokinen won it for them on a nice no look shot. There are a few things we could discuss here, but to me the thing that stood out here was the way Chris Drury, FINALLY, led the team to victory. Nobody bashes on Captain Cardboard more than me, but I can appreciate a well played game, and, more importantly a well led game. Drury only picked up an assist, which was a beauty, but he was all over the place, playing his customary 4th line checking defense, but, more importantly, leading the way in the offensive zone as well, showing a tenacious forecheck that has been, up until now, nowhere to be found for Drurys entire tenure as a Ranger. Now that is back to back games where Drury has been coming alive, maybe he is finally waking up out of his unbelievably horrible stupor that he has been in this year, or maybe its just one of the few blips of life on his otherwise flatlined season. I guess the next 20 odd games will really tell the story. If the Rangers are to make the playoffs, and really, we all want them to make the playoffs, Drury is going to have to LEAD this team to it. He is going to have to score goals, set up goals, crash the net, make the crease his territory, deflect pucks, and yes, have fights. He’s going to need to earn that ridiculous contract he has by giving us every single ounce of blood sweat and tears that he has in his body. For at least one night (well, to be fair, now 2 nights) he has done just that.

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It’s getting such that I need to take some Advil before watching a Rangers game nowadays, because by the end of the game I almost always have a skull splitting headache. Just watching this team give up breakaways with alarming consistency, or watching them play dominating hockey for 10 minute spans but do jack shit all else for the rest of the game is enough to drive any sane person to the nearest remote control. But sadly, I, like you, am compelled to continue watching this garbage display of hockey night in and night out.

I know the knee-jerk reaction to this game is to blame MDZ, or to blame Rozsival, or Callahan, or the hockey gods, or Torts, or whoever your fancy is. But I don’t want to do that. I’m getting tired of the blame game. A team that has to fault 1 or 2 different guys night in and night out is just plain and simple not good enough to compete. I mean, seriously, even with Gaborik in the lineup, do you think we deserved to win this game? Sure, it is entirely possible that with Gabby there, we actually score enough to win, but we didn’t play well enough to deserve the 2 points. Our goalie did, but that’s about it. Once you get past Henrik Lundqvist and Marian Gaborik, you get to a team filled with underachievers, or kids who haven’t yet mastered the NHL game. You can’t have a team with guys like Anisimov, MDZ, Gilroy, Callahan, Dubinsky, etc as all young guys on the team, and not have some guys around them that can help lead the way. But that’s the team we have. A team expected to be led by the vets, but who are being anchored down by the vets. A team that should have several 20 goal scorers, but who have only 2 or 3 at most. A team that has a guy like Enver Lisin, who might be the single dumbest hockey player I have ever seen, playing big time minutes. This is a team that just needs a wakeup call of monumental proportions. I am not talking about selling the farm for a quick fix, I am talking about a captain leading them to victory. I am talking about a defenseman getting paid 5+ million dollars actually putting up a point in a game. I am talking about leadership. Where is the damn leadership? Anyone know the answer?

I need an Advil.

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Enjoy:

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Where to start? The brilliance of Henrik Lundqvist? The brilliance of Sean Aver? The joy of having a working power play? Uncle Daddy being shaky? There were so many subplots coming into this game that I was almost scared it would be over before it started. The Rangers have been playing pretty well lately, but haven’t been getting the results they wanted, and tonight they had to play against the Atlantic division leading Devils, who came into the game having just acquired one of the best players in the game, Ilya Kovalchuk.

I expected it to be an interesting game, but I didn’t expect it to be so thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Generally Rangers-Devils games have really long boring stretches, but this one was pretty damn good from the drop of the puck. The Devils came out strong and basically forced Henrik Lundqvist to be the star attraction from moment one.

It certainly looked to me that the Devils had a set game plan. Shoot glove side. And really, you can’t blame them, if there is one area Henrik seems to be beatable, it’s high glove side. But today the Rangers goalie was flashing some leather, stopping both high, and low shots glove side. Henrik was tracking the puck better than he has been of late, and really stood head and shoulders above the rest of the players on the ice. In particular when compared to his counterpart, Uncle Daddy. Uncle Daddy did not look sharp, giving up a soft goal by Callahan, and giving Chris Drury a huge amount of net to shoot at on his goal. The Devils definitely had the bulk of the better play in this game, but this was not a game where Henrik Lundqvist stole 2 points for the Rangers. He was the #1 story, sure, but the Rangers played pretty damn well in front of their superstar goaltender, especially given the expected surge of energy the Devils would inevitably get by making such a lopsided trade for such a great player.

Speaking of Kovalchuk, he really did have a great game up until the final 2 minutes. He was outstanding on the rush, got quite a few quality scoring chances, and probably would have had a goal or 2 if Henrik wasn’t on top of his game. However at the end of the game Kovalchuk took a retarded penalty when falling for Sean Averys antics. That is what Avery is out there to do, to piss of Kovalchuk, and it worked. Kovalchuk was selfish and very stupid there, especially when you consider the Devils would end up getting a power play a short while afterwards. Think they could have used Kovalchuk for that PP with the game being close and them having 6 men on the ice? Had Avery not goaded Kovalchuk there, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Devils got 1 in the final minute to make this one close. As it stands, the Rangers picked up 2 crucial points, as their playoff positioning has become perilous, and these points have become basically must haves from here on out.

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This one needs to be short, almost 5 am here, and I need to wake up early, yikes. Anyway, I felt the Rangers played a pretty decent game when going toe to toe with inarguably the hottest team in the NHL, and arguably the best team in the NHL. They almost pulled out a win, and probably would have won if not for taking 9, count em, 9 penalties, at least 3 of which were unnecessary. The Caps absolutely blitzed us on the main advantage, as we blitzed them, and they beat us. I can’t be too unhappy because I felt like we played a fairly good game, however when you hear about the Devils getting my boy Kovalchuk, this loss feels especially painful. It’s not that we are super far out of the playoffs, the problem right now is games in hand. Every team we are fighting against has at least 1 game in hand, and most of them have 3. If those teams all pick up just 1 point per game in hand (as most of them tend to do, produce at a PPG rate or better), the Rangers would be 2 points ahead of the 13th place (in the East) Islanders, and would have a top 6 pick in the draft. That’s not good folks, not good at all, especially with the insanely difficult schedule we have coming up. That’s all for now, I need to hit the sack.

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Considering that Jokinen had just played the night before for a different sweater in a different system with a different coach, I thought he played well. Considering the Rangers, one of the coldest teams in the NHL went into Los Angeles against one of the hottest teams in the league, and were 2 goal posts away from coming up with a win, you can’t feel all that upset about the game. Really this game came down to 1 boneheaded move by the coach which cost the team 2 points.

On the Rangers power play in the second period, Torts decided to use 5 forwards on at the same time. I don’t know about you but I was absolutely shocked and disgusted at that move. I’m sorry, in a 0-0 road game you should never, ever do something retarded like that. Maybe if the game was at home, and you felt confident about your power play you can give it a shot. But with one of the leagues worst power plays, that has been absolutely putrid the past several weeks, you can not make that move. It was foolish of Torts to do so, and really marred what was a pretty good game for the Rangers.

Sure, Jokinen could have played that better, but the onus was on the coach to make the smart play and put Gilroy or Rozsival on at the other point. That was a boneheaded move.

Speaking of Rozsival, I must admit, that might have been the best game he has played in his entire career. If you watched it you saw a downright dominating performance by the beleaguered czech defenseman. Paired with Staal the 2 were absolutely dynamic in their own zone. They didn’t give up much, and when they did Henrik was there to bail them out. On the flip side of things, I thought Matt Gilroy has looked pretty poor for quite a while now. Not only is he providing absolutely NOTHING offensively, but he is so weak on the boards, and in 1 on 1 battles that you can’t see how he will ever be an effective defenseman at this level. Honestly, if the Thrashers could be convinced to let Kovalchuk go for a package with Gilroy in it, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Expect the next game to be somewhat brutal. Rangers are coming home, where they have been terrible, against the, now winners of 11 games in a row, Washington Capitals. Yikes, this one has all the makings of a massacre. Boy would I love to be proven wrong.

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While all Tortorella wanted to talk about in the post game was about how well Ocho Cinco played…and he definitely played great, to me this entire night was about Marian Gaborik. Guy played an unreal game, scored 3 goals, probably could have scored another 1 or 2, and was all over the ice in all situations playing hard. He was absolutely dominating out there. Makes you wonder how the guy would play with a better center…say a guy like, oh, I don’t know, Olli Jokinen?

I know people are kind of ambivalent about this trade, but I for one am absolutely ecstatic if it goes through. Not only do we rid ourselves of a horrendous contract in Kotalik, but we also rid ourselves of one of our least productive players in Chris Higgins. I know Higgins is a feel good story, a local kid with local ties, but let’s face it. He hasn’t even played as well as Freddy Sjostrom did in that position last year. Higgins is a 4th line penalty killing checker for this Ranger team. It wouldn’t surprise me if he goes to Calgary and starts lighting the lamp playing with Iginla, I mean hell, even Nigel Dawes was lighting the lamp playing with Iginla, but he has almost no value to the Rangers as it stands, and you can bet your ass the Rangers were going to let him walk after this season.

In Jokinen, if the Rangers do get him, they get a former star player who has struggled mightily this year, and is one of those “change of scenery” type players. Except in this instance, you are only on the hook for about 26 more games, and then we are free to let him walk, which I bet you we will unless he is willing to sign at a cheap rate for 1 year, or if he has an absolute renaissance back here. People forget that Jokinen has scored at least 29 goals in just about half of his NHL seasons, and he is still on pace to score about 50 points which is a hair under what Prospal is giving us. To me, a top line of Prospal – Jokinen – Gaborik is just what the doctor ordered. Let’s see how things play out. It’s almost 6 am now, and I just finished watching the game (had my own game to play tonight, and a nice long drive back to my house, hence the delay), so I’m going to go to bed, hopefully when I wake up in the morning, this trade will be finalized. It’s a no brainer for us Ranger fans, and an absolute steal for us, even if Higgins has a comeback season, and if Kotalik gets his act together.

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