Franchise goaltender, Henrik Lundquist, has agreed to a one year $4.25 Million contract. This signing ended up being a compromise for both sides – allowing the Ranger a little more cap room for this year than a long term $5 Million+ contract would have provided. It is also probably more than Lundquist would have received in arbitraton, which obviously both parties preferred to avoid. It is expected that the two sides will hammer out a long term extention after January 1, which will not effect this year’s cap.

The Blueshirts can probably now avoid arbitration hearings by signing Avery and Hossa and still stay under the pre-season limit of $55.33 Million. But even under the assumption that Kasparaitis is sent to Hartford at the beginning of training camp, they will almost certainly have to shed some more salary by trading or demoting at least one more player, in order to stay below the regular season upper cap limit of $50.3 Million. The most tradable player right now is Matt Cullen, whose $2.8 Million cap hit, could do the job nicely. This is assuming that the Rangers feel that Dubinsky, Pyatt or Anisimov are ready to step up now.