Rangers Down to 27

The assignment of Wade Redden has been finalized and he has now been shed from the cap hit for the time being. The Rangers also placed a number of players on waivers for demotion, demoted those who didn't need to be waived and released some from their professional tryouts to bring their roster number down to 27. Still included on the roster is rookie standout Derek Stepan and tryout Ruslan Fedotenko, both likely fighting for the same spot in the line-up.

This brings the camp roster down to 16 forwards, nine defense and their goaltending tandem still in camp and with Chris Drury currently on the shelf with a broken finger, there should only be a couple more cuts needed up front, as well as the blueline.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Marian Gaborik	Michael Del Zotto	Henrik Lundqvist
Vaclav Prospal	Marc Staal	Martin Biron
Alexander Frolov	Dan Girardi
Brandon Dubinsky	Michal Rozsival
Ryan Callahan	Steve Eminger
Chris Drury	Matt Gilroy
Sean Avery	Ryan McDonagh
Artem Anisimov	Mike Sauer
Tim Kennedy	Pavel Valentenko
Erik Christensen
Todd White
Brandon Prust
Brian Boyle
Derek Boogaard
Ruslan Fedotenko
Derek Stepan

The Rangers likely will not get much cap relief from Drury's injury, as he should be back in 2-to-3 weeks, which means the extra spot that is considered open is really only temporary. Right now, I have 26 players on their cap hit, Fedotenko is still unsigned, at an annual cap projection of $60.9 million, only $1.5 million over the cap with four or five cuts left to make. That will bring the cap hit down under the ceiling with ease, but leaves very little flexibility for the rest of the season.