The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

And with that, the staunchest of Blueshirt supporters officially began to abandon ship as well.

In reading a couple of message boards since the Rangers wrapped their ugly 3-0 loss to New Jersey, it’s become pretty evident that even the promise of Sean Avery’s triumphant return to Broadway will not be enough to stop the rivers and rivers of blood flowing from the vast number of holes in this Rangers team.

The bad news for this team: those holes are here to stay.

Scott Gomez’s $7.357 million cap hit will be on the books until 2014. Chris Drury’s $7.05 million hit will stay there until 2012. Markus Naslund’s ineffective ass will be weighing down the Rangers next year as well, to the tune of a $4 million cap hit.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Like Drury, Michal Roszival’s on the books until 2012, but at a more modest but somehow seemingly-worse $5 million a year. And Wade Redden, he of the 2-15-17 line and minus-11 in 53 games, including a minus-1 tonight, will cost the Rangers $6.5 million against the cap until 2014, when he will be 36 years old.

(A friend of mine that’s a lifelong Rangers fan sent me a text midway through the game. “Wade redden is the worst play in nhl history,” it read. “I cant imagine how he was once considered good.”

Yeah, it’s pretty tough to figure.)

Fun fact: The Rangers have $36.782 million committed to just six players on the roster (the above five plus Henrik Lundqvist) for next season, when the cap will go down and when they have to re-sign seven regular players that just happen to be restricted free agents this summer. Of the six signed players, only Gomez and Lundqvist are going to be under 30 next season.

In all, the Rangers have $40.159 million tied up in existing player salaries next year, with all those players to re-up, and the cap will almost certainly be going down.

Right, that’s good news.

Elsewhere…

Calgary 6, Montreal 2

Weeeeeeeee the Flames FINALLY win in February with an emphatic home victory of the slip-slidin’ Habs. Calgary scored a pair of shorties in the second period to wrap the game up, and I just laughed and laughed.

Boston University 5, Northeastern 2 (Beanpot Final)

Big shock: BU won another Beanpot, its 29th. Actually, it was a little surprising just how they did it: with three shorthanded goals, two of which were 30 seconds apart on the same NU power play. Colin Wilson led all scorers with three points, picking up his 10th goal (the last of the shorties) and his 25th and 26th assists. It’s just his 26th game of the year. Think that kid’s ready for the NHL? You bet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 3:22 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.