Pool Outlook for New York

The New York Rangers, the first of the teams that made the playoffs, but couldn't make it out of the first round after a loss to the Washington Capitals.  The Rangers slid into the playoffs using a Hurricanes loss in the final days of the regular season to do it.  It wasn't a very good season in the Big Apple, the Rangers were only as dominant as their number one goalie was most nights, but there wasn't a lot of depth to put the fear in other teams, either at home or the road.  On the flip side, the Rangers did show some positive direction with where the club was going, so if they can keep building on their own momentum, they may be all right down the road.

I don't think there is any surprise that Henrik Lundqvist was the best player for the Rangers in the 2011 season, he was the best goalie in pool points, finishing with 36 wins, 11 shutouts and 4 assists for 98 points, good enough for 4th in pool scoring overall.  Lundqvist didn't get a lot of scoring help this past season, so he had to win a lot of games by not giving a lot of goals, but there were just some nights where he had no help and surrendered a good number of goals against.  Lundqvist, in my opinion, is an under appreciated talent, since he didn't earn a Vezina finalist nod this year.

It wasn't a solid scoring year for the Rangers forwards, as only one forward finished in the top 100 of pool scoring this year, Brandon Dubinsky finished with 54 points in 77 games to lead all blue shirt forwards.  Ryan Callahan (48 points in 60 games) and Marian Gaborik (48 points in 62 games) were the only other two forwards to finish among the top 100 forwards in the league in 2011, showing you first hand, just how underwhelming this team was offensively.  Sure, injuries played a large part of it, but I think there was a definite case for poor chemistry as well.  Rounding out the top five forwards on the team, Derek Stepan had 45 points in 82 games as a rookie and Artem Anisimov finished with 44 points in 82 games as a grinding winger.

I don't think there was much that Dan Girardi didn't do for the Rangers in the 2011 season. The blueliner led all defensemen on the team in scoring, finishing with 31 points in 80 games, blocked more shots than any sane person would want to and led by example. Girardi did receive some help from the team's best young defenseman, Marc Staal, who finished with 29 points in 77 games, earning lots of praise for his defensive ability and the growth of his offensive game.  Finally, a trade deadline acquisition, Bryan McCabe finished the year with 28 points in 67 games between Florida and New York, but really didn't prove to be a great pick-up by the Rangers in the end, not improving their power play a great deal.

Much like many teams I've already had a look at in these pool outlooks, the Rangers also rode one goaltender for much of the regular season and when Martin Biron suffered a broken collarbone at the beginning of March, that spelled a lot more time in the crease for Lundqvist.  Biron finished the year with 16 points in 17 appearances for the Rangers, ranking 57th among all NHL goalies in pool points, despite missing the last six weeks of the season.

2012 Pool Outlook
If we learned anything about the Rangers in 2011, it was that they looked a lot of their cap problems in the eye and then buried them in the minors.  In order to keep a good chunk of the core group together in 2012, I am expecting to see Wade Redden remain in the minors and start building around what they have already.  On paper, the core group below doesn't look too bad, but there are certainly fears of inconsistency throughout, something they will have to overcome.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Marian Gaborik	Dan Girardi	Henrik Lundqvist
Derek Stepan	Marc Staal	Martin Biron
Wojtek Wolski	Michael Del Zotto
Brandon Prust	Ryan McDonagh
Erik Christensen
Sean Avery
Mats Zuccarello
Chris Drury

There are still some big ticket players on this Summer's preview version of the Rangers' line-up, which makes the math a little bit more interesting to work around.  The eight forwards, four defense and two goalies come in at $42.1 million against the cap, which should leave about $20 million for nine more players in the off-season duties.  Over the past year, the Rangers have done a good job paring down their cap woes, especially since they were nearing dire straits a few years ago.

The restricted free agent crop of Rangers will be a very important hurdle to leap this Summer and it should chip away at the remaining cap space quite quickly.  Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan (pictured), Artem Anisimov, Brian Boyle, Michael Sauer and Matt Gilroy are all headed to free agency this year and three of them could turn into medium-to-large ticket players with proper negotiations.  Re-signing this lot should be very important to Rangers management, but "how savvy can Glen Sather get?" will be the real question.

As much as the RFA group is important, the unrestricted free agents pack some real punch as well.  Bryan McCabe, Ruslan Fedotenko, Vaclav Prospal and Steve Eminger are all primed for the open market in July and I would imagine at least three of them hit the ground running to new teams.  The only one I can see sticking around would be Prospal, possibly taking a little less money as a 36-year old with good chemistry with Gaborik.

If the free agent crop is to keep from returning, the Rangers may have to look from within to find some help on the roster.  Unless there is a player with Stepan-like upside as a teenager, I would imagine that the Rangers would be looking towards players like Evgeni Grachev, Dale Weise and Ryan Bourque to step in up front, all into their 20s and have been developing at a reasonable pace, either in the minors or in their last year of juniors.  The Rangers do have more blue chip talent in their system, but I don't see them being rushed into the league next season.

The Rangers will pick 15th in the 1st round of this year's entry draft and I think they can go in any direction, likely going with the next best player available.  The Rangers have all kinds of talent up front and on the blueline, lots of investment in Lundqvist in net, so anything would be good for the Rangers this year.  If they go with talent up front, look for them to pick up a centre and if the Rangers look to the blueline, I would imagine it would be for more puck moving than size.

What I said last year at this time... "As for 2011, the Rangers are still being weighed down by some heavy cap contracts in Redden, Drury and Rozsival, which likely cannot be moved easily, if at all. The only player I expect better things from in 2011 is Rozsival, but even then it's a bit of a stretch. The Rangers will definitely be in the hunt for the playoffs, either just making it or just missing it, but it's going to be close again. The Rangers will ride heavily on their veterans to see the young kids through a grueling season, but improvements will definitely be in store for Del Zotto, Staal, Callahan and Gilroy."

The Rangers made it into the playoffs this year, by the skin of their teeth, largely on the backs of their veterans.  They were able to deal with a all of those larger contracts, dealing Rozsival away, sending Redden to the minors and Drury hit the Long-Term Injury Reserve for most of the season, so their trouble were very limited there.  Staal and Callahan made improving strides in 2011, Del Zotto dropped off in his sophomore year and Gilroy stayed the same from 2010.

The 2012 season appears to have the same sort of outlook to it as 2011 did, another close finish at the end of the year is likely in their future.  With whispers of the possible acquisition of Brad Richards on July 1st, the Rangers could make that move into the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference, but it will come at some significant cost.  As of right now, however, with the team that is signed on and their RFAs that need to be signed, the Rangers will likely finish in the 6th to 10th place range, battling for their playoff lives in the stretch run yet again.  The blueline will likely see some more improvement, as Staal and Girardi continue to lead, Del Zotto bounces back a bit and McDonagh turns into an everyday guy.  Until they can land a playmaking centre for Gaborik and/or Stepan, I don't expect a great deal of offensive improvements in New York.