Well, now that people are talking playoffs, I will be reviewing the seasons of teams as they're either eliminated from the playoffs or eliminated from playoff contention before the end of the season. Obviously, the last team reviewed will be the one that wins the Cup.
Now the last team to be eliminated from playoff contention before the postseason begins: The New York Rangers.
Season expectations: The team made it to the postseason last year when they were eliminated by the Washington Capitals after having a 3-1 series lead over them. GM Glen Sather did a good job in sending Scott Gomez to Montreal for Christopher Higgins and, essentially, cap space. He used that to sign Marian Gaborik from the Minnesota Wild in hopes that could invigorate Chris Drury's struggles despite his massive contract. While there were complimentary signings such as Vaclav Prospal and Don Brashear, there wasn't much room for improvement because of the contracts that Drury, Wade Redden, and Michal Rozsival were
earning receiving so the team had to use their young talent and role players to develop some type of cohesive scoring.
My prediction: I figured they would end up fourth in the Atlantic Division and eleventh overall in the Western Conference.
The truth: They finished ninth in the conference and fourth in the division.
What went wrong?: You mean besides the fact that Gaborik was the team's only consistent point producer?
The "Fire Sather" mantra that seems to becoming more prominent has a lot to do with it. The guys on the team making the highest salaries are Gaborik, Drury, Redden, Rozsival, and Hendrik Lundqvist to which only Gaborik and Lundqvist have even come remotely close to justifying their pay. As a matter of fact, Drury, Rozival, and Redden each had
career lows despite the fact that they're being paid to be the team's "go-to-guys" In the end, Gaborik, Prospal, and Brandon Dubinsky, were the only full-time Ranger members to earn more than 40 points for the season and no matter how good goaltending is, to only have three 40-point-scoring players is a huge problem, especially when you consider that there were only four other players who score better than
30 points.
So it turns out when you spend all that money on a handful of players, the guys you get to compliment them can either be hit or miss. Brashear was acquired to be the team's enforcer while Aaron Voros was acquired during the 08-09 offseason to give that third or fourth line toughness. In the end, the team had to trade for both Jody Shelley and Brandon Prust because the former two couldn't effectively carry out their duties. The team traded Lauri Korpikoski to the Phoenix Coyotes for speedy Enver Lisin and while Lisin was on fire during his first few games, he eventually cooled down as the season progressed. Olli Jokinen fared well when he initially came over from the Calgary Flames, but he became completely invisible. The team has promise but too much inconsistency throughout the lineup to make it gel.
So what's next?: Well, the team's going to go into the off-season wanting to lock up their RFAs (Marc Staal, Dan Girardi, Prust, and Erik Christiansen, to be specific) and maybe bring back Lisin and some of the other UFAs like Prospal, who was very well considering his $1.1M salary. Otherwise, Sather's going to have to maneuver over some elephantine contracts and the Rangers faithful may have to spend the next season or two watching someone else come April.
