Blueshirt Boggle

Real-Time Quotes

There is little happening by way of the Rangers these days as the playoffs head toward the finals. But here at Blueshirt Bulletin, we're working on the June issue, our last before our two-month summer hiatus. The issue will be divided between looking ahead toward the draft and free agent season, and looking back at the season past, with a particular focus on prospects, since their recent past can help us understand what to expect from them down the road. Here is a sampling of some of what you'll see in the issue, a single line from each of six articles:

"We have to make sure that even those guys contribute more offensively. You got to take some responsibility for those players to offer up more offensively too." -- a coach

"It's a numbers game with the salary cap, and where goaltenders end up may impact the bottom line of their teams and perhaps force them to relinquish the chase for a primo defenseman or center. Which is exactly the territory where the Rangers are hunting." -- a major-daily reporter

"Big Broad Street Bully Don Saleski finished his career in Colorado. Saleski was lined up in the face-off and he started talking to Pierre, asking how he was doing. Pierre said, 'How am I doing? I mean, Jesus Christ, you tried to kill me for fifteen years. Now you're my pal? Get out of here.'" -- a retired Ranger

"Losing hurts, for sure, but the only time it's wasted is if you don't glean something from it, and we think our kids are smart enough to glean something from this experience." -- a coach

"There’s no doubt in my mind Lauri will play in the NHL. It’s more a matter of, can he be a top two line player? That has yet to evolve." -- a member of the management team

"As much as I like the current team, competition is healthy -- this is the way you build through your organization. I can’t remember the last time there were so many promising young players on the way up through the system." -- a fan

You will not see any of this anywhere else but in Blueshirt Bulletin. That's a fact, Jack. Click on the link at the top of the sidebar to the right for subscription information. Blueshirt Bulletin would make a great Father's Day gift for the Ranger fan who has (almost) everything -- especially a generous and understanding wife or child.

Canada's Cup?

Oh, now I get it -- the whole point of the new CBA was to give the team that has won the most Stanley Cups in the past quarter century a chance to win another. Never mind that it forced Tampa Bay, the prior Cup winner, a small-market low-payroll team, to break itself apart (giving up guys like Khabibulin and Cory Stillman so they could afford to pay Lecavalier and St. Louis) before it ever had a chance to defend its championship -- remember that line about the new CBA allowing small market teams to stay together for more than one Cup run, the excuse used to counter arguments that low payroll teams like Buffalo, Carolina, Calgary, and Anaheim had all made it to the finals under the old CBA?

Now, with the UFA age reduced to 27, Tampa broke the bank to give Brad Richards, 26, the single-player maximum annual salary ($7.8 million) over the course of five years to keep him from going to arbitration this year and free agency next year. Just one year into the new CBA, salary escalation has already kicked in thanks to one contract handed out by a small-market team. But the NHL doesn't care -- they have their league-wide cap in place, so the only people who will suffer from the new salary scale will be other players who will be paid less... and teams who will have to break themselves up like Tampa did in order to keep their top stars... and the fans who will have endure the breaking up of their teams.

In short, everyone except for the rich owners... and the Edmonton Oilers. Why are we not surprised?

Larry Brooks of the Post and Spector of FoxSports.com both look at the ramifications of the Richards deal. Oiler fans demonstrated why bringing the Cup back to Canada was so important -- just the prospect of going to the finals caused them to commit acts of public vandalism. Ottawa fans want the Senators to keep Wade Redden over Zdeno Chara, Chara of course being at the top of the Rangers' wish list this summer. Hockey Rodent has a column on the prospects of Jan Marek coming to the Rangers and the NHL next fall, based on an article that appeared in Hokey.cz.

New Generation of GMs Coming In

The usual game of musical chairs played every off-season in which recycled coaches and GMs trade places in filling newly created vacancies has so far been eschewed this year as new blood is being injected into the system in the form of former assistants being elevated to general manager. Pittsburgh hired Nashville assistant Ray Shero to replace Craig Patrick -- Shero replaces the GM who replaced his father as Ranger GM in November of 1980. Yesterday, Shero was reportedly heading to Boston, but he quickly (and wisely) jumped that sinking ship when talks fell through (read: they didn't want to pay him enough). So Boston turned its attention to Ottawa assistant GM Peter Chiarelli -- and when talks with him fall through, they'll end up going with their own assistant GM and continue to be the new laughingstock of the league now that the Rangers have restored their own dignitiy.

Meanwhile, Colorado replaced longtime GM Pierre Lacroix with his former assistant and protege Francois Giguere, who had most recently served as assistant GM in Dallas. How long before some team realizes that the de facto manager of the Rangers bears the assistant title and deserves to be a full-fledged GM in his own right? Hopefully that team will be the Rangers and will allow Don Maloney to come out of the closet and be GM in name as well as in deed. Speaking of Dallas, they signed Joel Lundqvist, Henrik's identical twin brother, to a three-year entry level contract the other day. Back among Ranger prospects, the Ranger web site has a profile of Greg Moore.

Rangers Yet to Jump Into Deep Pool

What do Ryan Getzlaf, Steve Bernier, Zach Parise, Corey Perry, Mike Richards, and Patrick Eaves all have in common? Two things -- they all played in this year's playoffs, all but Richards into the second or third round, and they were all drafted in the first round in 2003 after the Rangers made Hugh Jessiman the 12th overall pick. In what may turn out as one of the best and deepest first rounds ever -- Eric Staal and Dion Phaneuf head a group that also includes Marc-Andre Fleury, Thomas Vanek, Jeff Carter, Milan Michalek, Nikolai Zherdev, Ryan Suter, and Nathan Horton, all of whom have already played at least 71 NHL games, several into this year's playoffs as well -- the Rangers have one of only three draftees to not yet reach the NHL (Brian Boyle of LA at 26th overall and Shawn Belle of St. Louis at 30th overall are the other two).

The sixteen players drafted after Jessiman in the first round have played an average of 47 NHL games each, led by Ryan Kessler of Vancouver with 110, plus 14 playoffs games in 2004 in which he registered nine points, and defenseman Brent Burns of Minnesota with 108. The sixteen, three of them defensemen, have combined to score 143 goals and 330 points in their 756 regular season NHL games. Meanwhile, according to Bruce Berlet, who covers the Hartford Wolf Pack for the Hartford Courant, in an article written for the upcoming June issue of Blueshirt Bulletin, "Hugh Jessiman struggled most of the season, spending two months in Charlotte and scratched throughout most of the [AHL] playoffs."

No one is throwing in the towel on Jessiman just yet, but given the kind of season he had at age 21 going on 22 (he turned 22 in late March), he's going to have to improve rapidly even as a late bloomer if he's going to live up to TSN.ca's projection of him as a "first line winger."

Still Stuck on Sloppy Officiating

There was a series of calls and non-calls in the first period of last night's Anaheim-Edmonton game that made me seriously wonder if the NHL is not intent on getting a Canadian team into the Stanley Cup finals. It started with a call against Edmonton for delay of game when Steve Staios lifted the net off its mooring to stop play -- a good call, which the NHL will someday realize is tantamount to a non-goalie covering the puck in the crease and will punish with a penalty shot. As the power play began, OLN analyst Neil Smith, the ex-Ranger GM, thought Jason Smith got away with high hit -- I didn't think so, but it's worth remembering for later.

The key call came about halfway through the power play with Ryan Smyth stickless and the Ducks teeing up a shot -- Corey Perry was called for goalie interference. The awful OLN coverage didn't have a good replay, and Smith called it wrong by suggesting the penalty was for clearing a broken stick along the half-boards, but a slo-mo look back at the action showed that Dwayne Roloson came out of his crease and bumped into Perry, who was already set, and not vice versa -- a bad call. When the Oilers went on the power play, they scored to take a 1-0 lead.

Off the center-ice face-off after the goal, Chris Kunitz was called for high-sticking near the Oiler blue line (Smith again got the call wrong by suggesting that the infraction took place behind the Oiler goal line) -- yes, he did high-stick the man, but a) the man was checking him away from the puck as he was trying to chase it deep into the Oiler zone, clearly a case of interference, and b) it was not much different than the infraction Jason Smith got away with two minutes earlier (a stick instead of an elbow).

At that point I thought they were tilting the ice for the Oilers, something I had sensed during their series with the Sharks as well. But shortly into the Oiler power play, Ales Hemsky was sent off for tripping on what was clearly a dive -- perhaps a make-up call for one of the three bad calls or non-calls already made on the Ducks (make that four if you include Staios shoving someone into the goal frame to cause another stoppage). This was not biased officiating, it was just bad officiating.

One can only wonder how the Ranger-Devil series might have gone if not for the officiating. It's hard in retrospect to imagine the Rangers winning with Henrik Lundqvist less than 100% and Darius Kasparaitis hiding a shoulder injury that ultimately required surgery. But with a healthy Jaromir Jagr they might at least have made some noise, and Jagr was injured killing a penalty in deep frustration late in a blow-out in which the referees called over twenty minor penalties, most on the Rangers. They didn't call games like that after the first one, having made their point to the NHL that you can't call every little thing during intense playoff battles. But (not to excuse the Rangers' own myriad mistakes in that game) the officials had already altered the course of that series irrevocably.

First Fan

In the 1970s, when I was living at home in Jersey and commuting to NYU, my friends and I used to go to Yankee Stadium about 15-20 times a season. We always bought general admission seats for $2.50, knowing that the last eight rows of the upper deck were available to us, and that if you got seats directly behind home plate you had a great view of the game for a price that was very friendly to college kids.

There was another group of fans who regularly employed the same viewing tactic. They all came separately, and they always sat at least one seat apart from each other, spreading out over two or three rows. But they all knew each other and kept up a running patter through the course of the game that was as entertaining for me and my buddies as the game itself. That's because these guys were, how to put it nicely, a bit off-center, a bunch of guys who devoted their entire beings to baseball.

They were always there. Every time. Every single game. When the Yankees were on the road, they gathered at Shea, or so we surmised as they compared notes about their plans for upcoming games. Some kept copious statistics in bulging notebooks. Others were intent on putting down or one-upping the others. And one in particular delighted in presiding over the confederation of baseball nuts, keeping everyone else honest, a loud growly bear of a man with a big fuzzy beard under a balding pate, as if gravity had pulled his hair down from his head to his chin.

Fuzzy is his name, and he is profiled today in the New York Times, who seem to have discovered him three decades late. If you frequent Madison Square Garden during Ranger games, you've probably seen Fuzzy -- maybe down in the red seats during warm-ups or up in the last row of the blue seats during games. I bet he's there for every Knick game too. There's a reason it took so long for the world to find out about Fuzzy -- despite being probably the most devoted sports fan ever in the history of history itself, there is something forbidding about him, something as prickly as his beard that makes you want to keep your distance.

For me, there is more. For five years, when I lived down on Broome Street, I took my daughters to school every morning on the #1 train. When I came back to the Canal Street station after drop-off, I'd frequently see Fuzzy sitting on a bench, alone, head down as if asleep, but with eyes open. He wasn't waiting for a train, or else he'd have gotten on the one I just got off. I can't imagine that he was waiting for something, because he'd be there whether it was 9:00, 9:15, or sometimes even near 10:00. I'm not sure what he was doing -- maybe there was a reasonable explanation. But I never felt warm and "fuzzy" enough, after seeing him in highly idiosyncratic circumstances for the past 20-25 years, to ask.

Sweden just won the World Championships, routing the Czechs 4-0. Michael Nylander, who once in his youth called himself the "Swedish Gretzky," had two more assists after notching three in the semifinal win over Canada. Former Ranger Mikael Samuelsson was one of the offensives stars for the Swedes. If the guy wearing the Lundqvist jersey in the photo atright looks familiar, that's Henrik's identical twin brother Joel, a Dallas Stars draftee.

Larry Brooks of the New York Post, the only columnist in these parts still writing about hockey (Jason Diamos of the Times continues to cover the Sabres), thinks the NHL needs a controversial TV figure to help boost interest. Someone like, oh, say, Don Cherry? Well, he's taken. But we have Jeremey Roenick, Brooks says, to spice things up with his mouth, which unlike your TV set has no on-off switch.

Small Markets Win, Big Ratings Lose

So is the NHL itself a winner or a loser under the new CBA? Considering the four teams that have made the Conference Finals, the party line of making small markets more competitive appears to have been achieved (only in the NHL could Southern California be considered a small market).

But the four teams got there in distinctly different ways. Edmonton used their cap space to bolster a core of homegrown first, second, and third round draftees by trading for accomplished veterans like Chris Pronger, Sergei Samsonov, Michael Peca, Dwayne Roloson, and Dick Tarnstrom. Anaheim by contrast got out from under their cap by trading away accomplished veterans like Sergei Fedorov, Petr Sykora, Sandis Ozolinsh, Mike Leclerc, and Steve Rucchin (three of them to the Rangers), allowing their newly acquired big-time free agents Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne to lead a home-grown core of high draft picks (three of them top-ten draftees).

Buffalo's roster has been nearly unaffected by the lockout -- they added only two players from outside their organization since its end (Teppo Numminen and Toni Lydman), relying on fourteen of their own draftees and players acquired prior to the lockout, all but three of the latter group (Chris Drury, Mike Grier, Daniel Briere) when they were still young prospects. Carolina, by contrast, came out of the lockout throwing bucks at free agents (Cory Stillman, Oleg Tverdovsky, Ray Whitney, and, after the 2003-04 season, Frantisek Kaberle and Matt Cullen) and added other veterans at the trade deadline (Doug Weight, Mark Recchi), augmenting a small but important group of their own draftees (Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Erik Cole) and previously acquired veterans (Rod Brind'amour, Bret Hedican, Aaron Ward, Mike Commodore, Martin Gerber).

With Buffalo and Carolina representing opposite ends of one spectrum -- Buffalo making virtually no moves after the lockout, Carolina suddenly spending money like a big market team that it previously claimed it didn't have -- and with Anaheim and Edmonton exemplifying opposite ends of different spectrum -- Anaheim shedding high-priced veterans, Edmonton adding them with payroll space it too claimed it never had -- and with traditional big-market teams in Detroit, Dallas, Colorado, Philadelphia, and even New York doing well until the early rounds of the playoffs despite payroll limitations -- and with the decline of some previously overachieving low-payroll teams like Tampa, Vancouver, and Minnesota, and Ottawa and Calgary once they got to the playoffs, it's hard to really tell whether the CBA really helped small-market teams compete, as advertised.

The only things we know for sure are that a) speed kills, b) you need a homegrown core no matter where you play or how much money you have, and c) the exclusive presence of small-market teams in the final four (really, in almost all of the final eight) is going to wreak havoc with TV ratings in the lower 48.

Boston Beaned by Cap

If you were to make a list of winners and losers under the new CBA, where would you put the Boston Bruins? Your gut reaction would be losers, and certainly Bruin fans fall into that category. After all they had to watch Joe Thornton, Boston's first overall pick in 1997 whose courage was questioned in the 2004 playoffs and who became an MVP candidate in a partial season in San Jose, go up against Sergei Samsonov, the seventh overall pick in that same 1997 draft who became one of the difference-makers in elevating Edmonton to the conference finals after being traded by the Bruins.

But what about Jeremy Jacobs, the notoriously greedy owner of the Bruins who specializes in gouging his customers when they are at his mercy, when they're hungry in stadiums, airports, theme parks, and the like? The owner who most visibly drove the lockout had a two-pronged plan in mind when he shut down the NHL for a whole season -- he wanted to be able to win a Stanley Cup without having to make any investment in players that would jeopardize the profits generated by his hockey and arena business.

You could definitely consider him a loser on one count -- money alone never bought a winner, as Ranger fans can well attest, and so his team crashed and burned for lack of hockey sense more than anything else (although the willingness of players like Thornton and Samsonov to put everything on the line to help maximize Jacobs's profits certainly was a contributing factor). But on another level, the one of tantamount importance to Jacobs, he came out a winner, a big winner, making profits hand over fist, spending even less on the product he was selling to his customers than ever.

The lion lays down with the mice: Eric Lindros once defined himself by his ability to dictate what terms he would play under, notes Steve Simmons at Slam! Sports. Now, the brittle aging superstar that never was will have to go begging for someone to hire him next season -- if he's able to play at all. So much for being a lion for a day -- a career is made up of more than just a day.

Hartford Packs it Up

Bruce Berlet of the Hartford Courant continues his post-mortem of the Wolf Pack on break-up day in the wake of their playoff ouster with an analysis of who might return next season, with some AHL veterans on the cusp depending on the status of the young prospects the Rangers choose to bring along. Bruce notes, among other things, that "Marc Staal has to play with the Rangers or return to juniors next season, and the Rangers are trying to sign draft picks Corey Potter, Nate Guenin and Michael Sauer." Bruce is working on a lengthy roster analysis for the June issue of Blueshirt Bulletin. The Rangers' web site features one of the young prospects who was in Hartford all season and should compete for an NHL job next season, Nigel Dawes.

The New York Rangers are not the only Rangers looking to the Czech Republic for players -- the Glasgow Rangers, an elite team in UK soccer, also signed a Czech player. This reminds me of the time I was in Manchester, England, on business in the late '90s and saw a headline that screamed "Smith Leaving Rangers!" Of course I knew that English sports enthusiasts were not interested in Neil Smith's status as New York Ranger GM, but the headline caught my eye nonetheless, what with Ranger fans debating heatedly over Smith's value to the organization at that time. What the headline was actually about was the departure of Walter Smith as longtime manager of the Glasgow Rangers. Goes to show you how slow the news can be in the off-season, to have to waste a paragraph on a faux-Ranger headline.

Shikor & Sykora

Sandis Ozolinsh appeared in court this morning to be arraigned on DWI charges. He pled not guilty, according to Newsday, and afterwards declined comment on advice of his lawyers. The paper also reports that the Rangers have not suspended Ozolinsh, continuing to say only that they are handling the matter internally.

There has been much speculation about Petr Sykora's relationship with Patrick Elias now that the two friends are free agents believed to be looking to reunite as teammates next season. The confusion may arise from Sykora's comments that the two had grown distant -- but what Sykora said was that playing on opposite coasts created a distance that didn't allow them to be as close as they would like. The two remain best of friends. Observers within the Ranger locker room expect Sykora to be signed by either the Rangers or Devils and then used to lure Elias to that same team.

With the Wolf Pack out of the playoffs, Bruce Berlet of the Hartford Courant turns his attention to the head coaching situation there -- GM Jim Schoenfeld does not want to do double duty again next season, but is unsure whether rookie assistants Ken Gernander or Ulf Samuelsson are ready to take over the top job yet. Bruce will explore the subject further in the June issue of Blueshirt Bulletin.

The Rangers' large and successful 2005-06 crop of rookies is reviewed in Hockey's Future. That is a subject already explored in the recent May issue of Blueshirt Bulletin [see the page images reproduced above -- click on the image to see a slightly larger but not readable version]. We will look deeper into the organization in the June issue, with Jess Rubenstein looking across the spectrum of college, junior, and European players in naming our Three Stars from among the prospects. Bruce will review the Hartford roster and let us know what to expect from them next season.

If you are not already a subscriber, the May issue is still available. The June issue is probably four weeks away from publication. Subscription information is available at the top of the sidebar to the right -- just click on "Download Subscription Form". Your support of the print publication helps fund this web site. Thanks!