The 2009-10 New York Rangers: Sure, Why Not?

(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Woo! Back to serious sports-blogging, a nice break from Rory Photoshopping Wade Redden’s face onto Lucifer’s crotch and the like (although that is awesome, admit it).

So, this coming off-season, before the start of the 2009-2010 season, there are some serious issues facing the New York Rangers. And there have been some serious developments over the last few days. Let’s break this down, yo.

In case you’ve been in a coma since around dinner time on Tuesday, Glen Sather had a rare moment of genius. He fleeced the living hell out of the Montreal Canadiens, trading Scott Gomez and his walrus of a contract, along with a couple of prospects that I’d never heard of, for Chris Higgins, a multi-season 20-goal scorer, and a couple of prospects; one of whom, from reading the Montreal HF Message Boards, makes Bobby Orr look like my Aunt Iris after a few glasses of Chardonnay. So, this is good news for us Blueshirt Faithful.

While we are still reeling from the sheer awesomeness that was the Gomez trade, we now have to realize that we are sorely lacking as far as good centers go. We’re left with Drury and Dubinsky. Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but still, that’s two out of four lines; which, just in case you flunked 1st grade math, isn’t that great. This, however, can be rectified with some simple, small signings, or AHL call-ups.

So, this isn’t anything to terribly freak out about. Yet.

Onto another issue which still plagues our beloved Rangers: defense. While Slats was downright brilliant in dumping Gomer, he would have to be the Wizard of Oz to rid us of Wade Redden. Actually he wouldn’t, he would just have to put Wade on waivers and let him rot in the AHL. But, um, yeah that won’t happen—so we’re stuck. At least he showed a tiny bit of improvement under Tortorella and in the playoffs.

Michal Roszival is still around, sucking up more cap space than he should, Paul Mara may not be back, and we’ll most likely have a hole where Derrek Morris was for a while. However, we still have Marc Staal and Dan Girardi, given that Danno regains his form from the 2007-08 season.

But, there won’t be as much riding on the defense this season, with a new coaching system and some new spicy offensive talent, so that’s a bright spot in the dark pit of the Rangers defense corps. The problem is that there are only two good players to fill six spots.

No bueno, mis amigos.

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