Rangers Almost Ready

After cutting five players from the roster, the Rangers are now the closest team to finishing up their opening night roster, as they now have 24 signed players on their current active roster and still one player who was invited to camp on their roster.

Defenseman Alexei Semenov was invited to camp this Summer and remains with the Rangers as they move into the last week and a half of the preseason. Because of this, he won't be on the roster listed below.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Chris Drury	Michal Rozsival	Henrik Lundqvist
Vaclav Prospal	Wade Redden	Stephen Valiquette
Ales Kotalik	Dan Girardi
Brandon Dubinsky	Marc Staal
Ryan Callahan	Michael Del Zotto
Marian Gaborik	Matt Gilroy
Chris Higgins	Bobby Sanguinetti
Sean Avery
Enver Lisin
Aaron Voros
Brian Boyle
Donald Brashear
Artem Anisimov
Evgeni Grachev
Pierre Parenteau

There are plenty of new faces on the team, including Ales Kotalik (pictured right), Vaclav Prospal, Marian Gaborik and Chris Higgins, not to mention a bunch of new young players that are very close to cracking the team on a full-time basis officially. There will have to be a couple more cuts before October 1st, but now they have a list of players they can be comfortable with to choose from.

With the additions of the young players to the list, the Rangers are now up to 24 players (one over the allotted roster) at a cap hit of $58.2 million, which is $1.4 million over the salary cap ceiling. These numbers were also rounded up for ease of use. To bring the salary cap hit down below the ceiling, they would have to cut a player that is on a one-way contract, risking losing him through waivers or sending stand-out rookie defender, Matt Gilroy, to the minors, because he is on a two-way deal.

The young Rangers talent has been impressive in the preseason, but with how much is listed on their roster, it would lead to believe that they may be worn down a lot by the 60-game mark in the season. The Rangers could be a very strong early season team, but it remains to be seen how the young players who were in juniors last year will fare in the grueling schedule put ahead of them in the NHL.