Rangers Warming Up To Hit The Full Season Ice

Well it’s that time again.  The new NHL season is at our doorstep with lots of league-wide changes.  One of the most noticeable facelifts for the 2008-09 season has to be the New York Rangers.  Their decision to go a different direction and allow both, captain, Jaromir Jagr and his right-hand man, Martin Straka, walk away and sign with the new European “Super League” has led to a shift of “leadership,” dynamic, and talent.  Along with those two stars went fan favorite henchman, Sean Avery.  And with less than a week to go before the puck drops for the regular season, aged veteran and all around leader Brendan Shanahan remains unsigned.

 The Rangers used the new cap space to bring in star defensman, Wade Redden, ex-Canucks captain, Markus Naslund, a young hotshot Nikolai Zherdev, and a good amount of musle in Aaron Voros.  On paper, all great pickups.  But the outcome remains to be seen until these players take the ice together and see if they can mesh well.  It will either be a great lineup that will once again put them in playoff contention, or if they don’t click it can turn into a big mess.

 Overall, I feel the moves give the team much more speed and depth in their bottom lines.  Most importantly the loss of Jagr will boost their powerplay.  For the past several years, the powerplay should have been the Rangers’ strongest feature but instead of moving the puck around and pounding the net, they’ve just been guilty of always feeding the puck to Jaromir Jagr.  Every team just needed to address Jagr and if they held him back they had a great chance at winning.  Without Jagr, the puck will be spread around and the outcomes won’t depend solely on one all-star.

 The Rangers will start the season over in Europe, so to take care of travel, the team played a very packed preseason with 6 games in 8 days.  They only won one game, but like every other sport, preseason consists mostly of young talent playing and trying out to make the team.  Only time will tell.

 The puck drops on October 4th. 

This entry was posted on 29. September 2008 at 19:05 and is filed under NHL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.