Prust Inks in the Big Apple

The Rangers did well to re-sign Brandon Prust on Friday, giving him a new 2-year deal with a cap hit of $800,000 each year. Prust, in my opinion, was the key to the deal that saw the Flames off-load Olli Jokinen to the Rangers at the trade deadline and in turn, Prust gave the Rangers some excellent play in the 2010 season.

In 26 games with the Rangers, Prust scored 4 goals and 5 assists, giving the team a decent scoring rate from the bottom six, but his bread and butter was the 65 penalty minutes he earned in those same games.  Prust plays with a certain edge to his game, which the Rangers really like and have complimented in some other signings in the first couple days of free agency.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Marian Gaborik	Michael Del Zotto	Henrik Lundqvist
Vaclav Prospal	Michal Rozsival	Martin Biron
Brandon Dubinsky	Matt Gilroy
Ryan Callahan	Wade Redden
Chris Drury
Sean Avery
Erik Christensen
Brandon Prust
Aaron Voros
Brian Boyle
Derek Boogaard

As you can see, the Rangers have added a lot of toughness to their line-up with Derek Boogaard already this Summer, which makes them a very tough team.  Between Avery, Prust, Voros, Boyle and Boogaard, the Rangers are going to be ready and willing to either get under your skin or drop the gloves... possibly a little bit of both.

The Rangers have a pretty good compliment of players signed on so far, having 11 forwards, 4 defense and a goaltending tandem set for the 2011 season at a fairly reasonable cost of $49.7 million.  There is a lot of speculation that the Rangers will try and save themselves some money against the cap by sending Wade Redden to the minors to remove the burden of his $6.5 million hit, even if it is only for a smaller portion of the season.  Right now, the Rangers don't look to be in dire need of that cap help, but they might make a move for more of a top end player, which might require some cap assistance when the puck drops on opening night.