Battle Of Hudson

The Islanders will be minus Josh Bailey until the Olympic Break. The second-year pivot is banged up with one of those “lower body” injuries. In 55 games this season, the 20 year-old former 2008 ninth overall pick has posted 13 goals and 14 assists totaling 27 points (career best). Following a slow start, he’s been one of the Isles’ best players recording a personal high seven-game scoring streak (12/29-1/12) in which he tallied 12 points (4-8-12).

Bailey’s improvement along with the development of young guns John Tavares and Kyle Okposo are big reasons why the franchise has a bright future. Losing their second line center is tough, especially on a low scoring club not finishing. During a five-game skid that’s seen them lose ground in the playoff race, the Isles have scored only six goals. It’s just another obstacle for Scott Gordon’s team to overcome.

Following a three-day layoff, they return to action tomorrow visiting Tampa Bay before coming back home to host Carolina this weekend.

The Islanders have placed veteran defenseman Brendan Witt on waivers. The soon to be 35 year-old physical blueliner has been sidelined with a lower body injury since Jan.9. In 42 contests this seeason, he’s 2-3-5 including a game-winner along with 45 penalty minutes and a minus-18 rating.

Since signing four years ago, Witt’s been a solid citizen providing leadership in the Isles’ room. With the development of Andrew MacDonald and Jack Hillen’s improvement, perhaps he became the odd man out. He does have one more year left on his contract, due $3 million in ’10-11. Unless another team takes him, it looks like he’ll be reassigned to Bridgeport.

Angie of NYIslesScene has more on this move.

Forget waiting until the end of the game. It’s like watching the Flameout last night. Olli Jokinen and Marian Gaborik have no chemistry and the Rangers sure can’t compete with the much bigger, faster Kings. A lot can be said about John Tortorella’s boneheaded move putting five forwards out on a 5-on-4 power play, which predictably resulted in the Kings’ best player Anze Kopitar scoring on a shorthanded breakaway. That Gaborik and Jokinen miscommunicated at the point leading to it spoke volumes. Just how many different pointmen can Tort try? You never stick five F’s out unless it’s 5-on-3.

There also was the bizarre line combo that had Chris Drury with Brian Boyle and Aaron Voros. Did the coach forget his med? Holy smokes. Look. Dru has been brutal this season but sticking him with two slugs is a total waste. Let our new bruiser Brandon Prust play with them on an energy line. He sure made his presence felt taking an undisciplined boarding minor and instigating a fight with Brandon Segal, earning a misconduct. Only 19 penalty minutes and fight No.19 for the kid with the fresh mohawk buzz cut donning Marek Malik’s former No.(8). At least the guy wearing it will finish checks and keep fans awake.

Thanks to Marian Gaborik’s fifth in three games- a nice tip-in of an Erik Christensen backhand pass- they’re only down a goal with under a minute left trying to tie it. They probably won’t tie it and don’t deserve to. Ryan Callahan came close on a tip with 11.4 ticks left. What’s with all the “Rangers Suck” chants? These Hollywood fakes are louder than Satan’s worshippers. That faceoff was a joke as four seconds ran off before somehow the puck came to Drury, who was robbed by Jon Quick at the buzzer for LA’s seventh consecutive win. Had they forced overtime, it would’ve felt wrong because that’s how outplayed they were. Save me the whole MSG bs that they didn’t give up. You could easily say the same for that Phoenix stinker where in typical Ranger fashion, they teased us. No wonder our own fans hate them.

Look. Nobody’s saying Joke-inen is going to save this team because at the end of the day, there’s not enough net presence and we’re still stuck with Tinman and Woh-zsival. Until Glen Savior can find a sucker like Darryl Sutter for our two albatrosses, this team shall remain severely flawed. Yesterday, we had the half glass view praising the GM for ridding of Ally, saving three million. I too liked Higgs but he just couldn’t finish. He can always be brought back over the summer. Highly unlikely. Jokinen’s salary comes off setting us up to take a run at someone on July 1. Preferably a crease clearer. I’d like to see Slats try packaging Dan Girardi and a young forward to fill that void. But who’s available? Of course, I’d kill for a high character guy like Robyn Regehr but he ain’t going anywhere following the Phaneuf deal. He got off to a good start tonight against the suddenly reeling Devils, who just aren’t the same minus Patrik Elias.

The Pluses from tonight and there weren’t many:

A.Henrik Lundqvist was very sharp following the six day layoff. Don’t be fooled by the 19 saves as many were high quality.

B.Gaborik continued to finish. You know what they say about goalscorers. Get one and they usually break out. That’s five for the Great Gabby on the road trip giving him 34 on the season. Whatever happened to all those punch lines about his durability? Whether he can mesh with Jokinen remains to be seen.

C.The PK went for 3-for-3 against a potent LA power play that burned the Devils. No small task.

D.Brandon Prust. He needs to be a little smarter but boy can he be a breath of fresh air for the Garden Faithful.

The Negatives:

A.The coach stunk. Weird lines. Way too many combos. Idiotic coaching on the PP cost them the game’s first goal. For a guy who won a Cup, some of his decisions are quite baffling. Granted. He had a lot more to work with in Tampa. But come on!

B.Jokinen was caught out for both goals against finishing with zero points, 4 SOG and a minus-two in 20:34. Also found no chemistry with Gaborik whose goal came with waiver steal Christy out there.

C.Does this team practice the power play? Isn’t Tort supposed to be an offensive mind? They’ve gone completely backwards. Just do us a favor and decline it!

D.Shoot The Puck! Seri—ous—ly, they were stuck on 12 shots after 40 minutes. Last night, Calgary had 10 en route to 18 in a listless performance. At least this wasn’t on home ice because they would’ve gotten booed out of the building. How many times can our guys overpass. It’s like they still have Jagr Syndrome. I expect it from Woh-zsival. But the rest of ya should know better.

E.Lack of crease presence. It’s something that’s plagued this vanilla cream custard soft serve club for years. I get that the LA blueline is very good, making Quick’s life easy with All-Star Drew Doughty, Rob Scuderi and Jack Johnson leading the charge. But is it too much trouble to ask one of our players to get the uniform a little dirty? Saw Slats’ interview and he better not be done!

F.No Pushback. Let’s face it. Our D is soft as molasses and should be sponsored by Hostess. I wonder why they haven’t gotten them yet on one of those cheesy glass advertisements. Marc Staal’s the only one who really competes but even he’s not that strong in front of his own net. He’s really turned around his year and also did some nice things keeping plays alive in the offensive end, leading to an early Jokinen opportunity with the game scoreless. But outside of him, there’s nothing. Both Tinman and Woh-zsy are incapable. Though Michal at least can break up plays. Girardi is inconsistent. At times, he makes solid reads and even uses the body and then there are instances where he passes the puck up the middle like tonight which lead to glorious chances. Matt Gilroy’s not that kind of player and DZ’s still a pup who at least throws the body consistently. But it takes time to develop. Honestly, they should give Heineken, Sangs and Sauer another look. I know it’s not happening. But that’s what I’d do.

Don’t forget Thursday, our heroes return to host Ovechkin and the sizzling Caps, who are only winners of 11 straight following tonight’s 4-1 win over the inept B’s. As my Dad said:

“That should be cute.“

3rd Star-Henrik Lundqvist, NYR (19 saves incl.10/11 in 2nd in return)
2nd Star-Jack Johnson, LA (3 missed shots, 2 blocked shots, +2 in 19:22)
1st Star-Anze Kopitar, LA (1st SHG of season, 3 SOG, 7 attempted, 2 hits in 24:49)

I’m not even waiting till the end of this game to recap another embarassing, shameful performance by the Devils. I’ll be too annoyed after the game to want to be on the computer, so might as well vent now during the second intermission on how the Devils have turned in an absolute no-show at the Air Canada Centre against a Maple Leafs team that was supposed to have an AHL offense. Instead, Brian Burke‘s goon squad bullied us early (despite dressing two goons ourselves) and Jacques Lemaire continued his hair-pulling fascination with getting Jay Pandolfo and Rob Niedermayer as much icetime as is humanly possible but I’ll get to the mind-boggling ice totals of our forwards in a minute.

Lemaire’s first eye-opening decision came when he played Yann Danis, granted I was calling for this too but personally I would rather have waited till Friday, especially given the back-to-back this weekend. Throwing Danis – who hadn’t started in two and a half monts out there in front of a fired-up Leafs crowd anxious to see their new toy (Dion Phaneuf) – was just asking for trouble. Of course, there’s an unofficial policy that Martin Brodeur absolutely must play at home, during the three years at the Rock in fact Brodeur’s only sat out one home game where he was healthy enough to play, and he wound up playing that one anyway after Kevin Weekes got hurt.

In any event, I wasn’t surprised Danis looked rusty, that’s what happens when you have no real game action for two and a half months, other than a relief win against the Thrashers. He didn’t even really give up bad goals as much as stoppable ones, Nikolai Kulemin scored off a shaky rebound at 4:40 of the first period, Phil Kessel scored on a rebound Danis had no chance on at 2:23 of the second and Francois Beauchemin scored off a rocket on the power play (what a concept!) at 14:08 but the shot was unscreened or deflected.

Still, Danis wasn’t the main problem. Lemaire’s icetime distribution has been much more of an issue tonight. Through two periods, the icetimes of the aformentioned Pandolfo (12:14) and Niedermayer (11:51) eclipsed those of our only two top forwards at the moment – Zach Parise (12:00) and Travis Zajac (an unconscionable 9:39 for our only NHL center). Okay, maybe part of that is because we’ve been shorthanded four times plus Zajac sat for a shift or two after a mistake on the second goal but come on, if we sat Mike Mottau for every mistake he’s made he’d be getting the icetime of one of our resident goons! It’s also comical that Lemaire admitted he’s running Niedermayer into the ground and still is playing him at an 18-minute pace. That’s disconcerting, when you know what you’re doing and still can’t stop yourself from doing it!

Of course, Lemaire also saw fit to not only dress one, but two goons. Not that I particularly miss Vladimir Zharkov (he of the zero goals on the season) or Rod Pelley, but honestly what use does Andrew Peters serve when he stinks as a hockey player, has had four fights total in 23 games this season and wasn’t even involved in either of the two tonight? For crying out loud, even Colin White with a bad eye dropped the gloves with Dion Phaneuf after Phaneuf crunched Zajac and tried to take out Parise! Phaneuf of course, made his presence known early and often with his physical play and the Leafs followed suit.

And what of the Leafs’ other major acquisition? I would say we’re making Jean-Sebastian Giguere look like he’s back in 2003 at the Pond again except that Giguere looks like he’s on Maui even more. Other than a Zajac shot that hit the post late in the second period, we haven’t tested Puffy Pads one time in our eighteen shots on net. Unreal. This team better show up Friday because I’m really getting tired of ripping everyone a new one. You would think the team would show just a bit more passion out there, given Sunday’s humilation and Friday’s unneccesary nail-biter.

Oh well, it could be worse. Baseball season’s just around the corner.

As expected, the much discussed trade between the Flames and Rangers finally became official late last night. Following Calgary’s dreadful 3-0 shutout home loss to the Flyers, the two clubs reached agreement on a four player trade that sends Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust to Broadway for Christopher Higgins and Ales Kotalik.

Rather than sound like a broken record repeating our breakdown posted previously in this space, we’ll just commend Glen Sather on getting this done. Thanks in part to John Tortorella sending a message that Kotalik sucked, Slats admitted error and moved the ex-Sabre and his ugly $3 million salary/no-trade to Siberia Alberta. In doing so, he got rid of one headache. While parting with the energetic but snake bit Higgins was necessary, it allowed the struggling Smithtown native to start fresh and try to boost his value this summer. It just didn’t work out here.

Adding Jokinen, whose hefty $5.25 M salary will come off the books at season’s conclusion- is a good move because it fills a void at center. Whether the 31 year-old veteran can return to the All-Star form he displayed in the Sunshine state remains to be seen. But the big pivot returns to the East where he’s quite familiar and should have plenty of incentive.

“It comes with the salary, you make $5 million, 11 goals isnot going to cut it,” the disappointed Finn told the Canadian media.  “It’s definitely a slap in the face to get traded.“

“I get a chance to play with one of the better players in the league in [Marian] Gaborik.”

If he can effectively team with Gaborik and Vinny Prospal, suddenly the Rangers could become a better team allowing others to take on more comfortable roles. It should relieve pressure off Chris Drury, who is better served anchoring a checking line with Ryan Callahan and Brandon Dubinsky. What could the lines look like for tonight’s final game out West in Hollywood? Who knows. Perhaps this might be worth a try:

Prospal-Jokinen-Gaborik
Dubinsky-Drury-Callahan
Anisimov-Christensen-Lisin
Prust-Boyle-Voros

Getting the 25 year-old Prust was a necessity, finally addressing the lack of toughness. The Rangers have repeatedly been pushed around with the Daniel Carcillo thuggery of Gaborik with nobody coming to the star winger’s aid standing out. Ironically, they dropped five in a row before Gabby recorded his first hat trick as a Ranger in a 3-1 win over the Avalanche Sunday. Perhaps the presence of Prust, whose 18 fights lead the league rank right behind Zenon Konopka will deter opponents from messing with Gaborik or crashing Henrik Lundqvist’s crease.

“I’m looking forward to going to the big city and playing in Madison Square Garden so I’m looking forward to it, but I’m sad to leave again,” an emotional Prust expressed.

For what’s been the most vanilla team you’ve ever seen, the Rangers just got a lot more interesting. The question is how will this new roster perform. In a mediocre East with the club that’s won only once in the last six remarkably moving up into seventh due to a Florida loss last night, they have until the Olympic Break to give Sather a stronger indication of what will happen at the March 3 deadline. That’s not a lot of time.

While the Blueshirts upgraded short-term, Calgary maybe setting up for a much bigger fish. Having stockpiled 13 wings, Darryl Sutter looks to be in position to make more deals. Could Ilya Kovalchuk be his primary target? Expect stiff competition from Washington, Philadelphia and LA with another mystery Eastern team sliding in. It should be fun.

For the Rangers, the fun starts later tonight.

The Sabres probably will be seeing Sidney Crosby in their sleep. The game’s brightest star shown brightly, going for a hat trick in a come from behind 5-4 Pens’ win over Buffalo at Mellon Arena.

The hat trick was Sid The Kid’s fifth career and third this season. That he scored the three within an 8:02 span speaks to the kind of special season the Penguin captain is having. With four goals in 24 hours, including a nifty shootout clincher in an exciting 2-1 home win over the Red Wings, the 22 year-old former Hart winner is now tied with San Jose’s Patrick Marleau for the league lead in goalscoring. Each have 37. Amazingly, Crosby’s just two away from tying his career high of 39 established in his rookie season (’05-06). The way he’s finished, it looks like he’ll shatter it and could compete with Marleau and archrival Alexander Ovechkin for the Rocket Richard. Ovie trails by two with Marian Gaborik (33 G) fourth and much rumored Ilya Kovalchuk (31) fifth.

Before Sid’s eruption, Lindy Ruff’s club had battled back from an early Mark Letestu goal scoring three straight to take a 3-1 lead almost half the contest to go. Derek Roy’s power play goal and resurgent Thomas Vanek’s 17th came 48 seconds apart in the first period, where they outshot Pittsburgh 12-8. The action was fast and furious as both teams traded chances, forcing both Marc-Andre Fleury and Ryan Miller to be good. It looked like the potential Olympic battle between Canada and USA would go to Miller, who’s been having a great season.

Ironically, a Crosby turnover at the blueline resulted in Tim Kennedy putting Buffalo ahead by two. Clarke McArthur quickly transitioned the puck to Mike Grier, who with a three-on-two developing, made a sweet dish to Kennedy for a tip in. Kennedy came close to getting another on the next shift but the near miss loomed large. The game swung dramatically thanks to a Chris Butler hooking minor. Handed a power play, the Pens made it count with Evgeni Malkin and Alex Goligoski combining to set up a wide open Crosby at the bottom of the right circle for No.35.

With the game evolving into a track meet which didn’t favor the Sabres, the Pens drew even when Jordan Staal took a Malkin pass and beat Miller with a quick one-timer, snapping a 12-game drought. Crosby took over scoring twice more in a 75 second span late in the stanza. First, he cashed in on a Miller turnover outside the net, beating a scrambling Buffalo goalie with a one-timer that trickled off him and in. He misconnected on a pass to Tyler Myers, allowing Sidney to score unassisted for a 4-3 lead with 2:30 remaining. He wasn’t done, completing the trick in fine fashion by beating Miller on a breakaway. Taking a perfect Kris Letang outlet during four-on-four, Crosby came in on a two-on-one faking pass before firing home his 37th cueing raining hats everywhere.

“We made some good plays. We had an odd-man rush, we had a good bounce off the skate and he [Miller] isn’t able to get back in the net [on one goal],” Sid The Kid assessed. “If you look at the goals, you can’t really fault him on a lot. There were some really nice plays made there. I don’t think we tried anything different [against him], we always try to get second chances and that’s tough for anybody.”

“I don’t know if he’s getting better, but he’s taking advantage of the opportunities we gave him,” a disappointed Kennedy noted. “When you give a guy an open net and give a guy a 2-on-1 and then a power play, guys like that aren’t going to miss those opportunities. That’s on us. He is one of the best players in the game, but I think that we gave him a lot.”

Crosby easily could’ve had more but a feisty Miller who tripped up Sidney early in the third, didn’t allow anymore. He was sharp in the third repelling all 13 shots sent his way giving teammates a chance. While it didn’t look like that would happen, a late Pens’ penalty gave Buffalo a ray of light when Jason Pominville connected on the power play off a nice feed from Tim Connolly, cutting it to 5-4 with exactly three minutes remaining. It got even more interesting when Brooks Orpik went to the box allowing Ruff to pull Miller for a six-on-four. There were a couple of close calls but Fleury kept the puck out to give his team the win.

“When you have a two-goal lead, you play a tighter game than that,” Ruff acknowledged. “You don’t hand them those opportunities.”

3rd Star-Jordan Staal, Pit (13th of season ends 12-game drought, 4 SOG, +1 in 22:00)
2nd Star-Thomas Vanek, Buf (PPG, assist, 4 SOG in 18:55)
1st Star-Sidney Crosby, Pit (3rd hat trick of season-35, 36, 37,5th career, 5 SOG in 20:02)

Based on what’s been said tonight by TSN’s Darren Dreger and other reliable sources including Bob McKenzie on Twitter, looks like that trade between the powerless Flames and Rangers could be a go.

If you based this listless performance in which they can’t even reach 20 shots about to be blanked 3-zip by the Flyers, Calgary definitely needs another shakeup. With the horn sounding and boos coming down at Pengrowth Saddledome, it’s official. The first game for new Flames Ian White, Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman and Jamal Mayers was epic fail. Shutout on your own home ice with just 10 shots the first two periods and only mustered eight more, making it a light night for world beater Ray Emery.

Olli Jokinen may have played his final game in Alberta, finishing with three shots and a minus-one in 15:08. Rumored ‘mate Brandon Prust got 7:28. Will they finally be on the move here for Ally and Higgs? Bigger question is if it does happen, what exactly is Calgary’s plan to acquire Ilya Kovalchuk? Like in Jeopardy, we should have a final answer soon.

While it isn’t quite Black Monday today, the news that both Paul Martin and David Clarkson are now officially out until after the Olympic break isn’t exactly making yesterday’s game go down any better. For Martin, it’s a bigger blow than that for he won’t be participating on Team USA in the Olympics either. Though some fans are probably glad at that fact, I looked on those games as ones he could have regained conditioning after missing so much time. Now even with him coming back in early March, it’ll take at least several games for him to really get in gear. Same with Clarkson, but I guess in one sense the returning players will make the final month more interesting than merely seeing what seed the Devils get in the playoffs.

At least the news on Patrik Elias is a little better as he’s begun skating and should return to practice soon, so there still seems a chance that he will come back before the Olympic break and be able to play for his country as well. Given our pitiful offense this month, he’ll be welcomed back almost as much as he was in 2006, when his return energized the Devils, along with Lou Lamoriello taking over as coach.

I don’t think Lou will be doing that this time around, especially given the regard he holds Jacques Lemaire in. However, the aftermath of yesterday’s meltdown against the Kings troubles me as much as the actual game. For starters, while Lemaire had no problem admitting Martin Brodeur let up a soft goal to tie the game, he also tried to put a happy face on it saying that we only gave six or seven chances to the Kings and had bad breaks go against us. First of all while the Kings had almost nothing in terms of offense for the first fifteen minutes of the game, they got more pressure than that. It’s just that they missed the net a lot too. Plus it’s funny how those so-called bad breaks always seem to happen with the same players on the ice.

Worse, Lemaire completely absolved Mike Mottau of a rookie mistake, which would be fine if it was a rare occurence but it hasn’t been this season. Mottau himself admitted that one of the Kings players schnookered him by calling for the puck and that’s why he threw the blind backhand pass into nowhere. You just wonder what would have happened if Mark Fraser had done the same thing, god knows he gets almost no icetime as it is. And I’m not trying to say Fraser would be better than Mottau (though right now Mottau’s no better than the fifth best defenseman on the team and will be sixth if Martin ever gets back), but it would be nice to see him get more time and our other defensemen who haven’t been able to handle increased minutes get a little less.

Not to mention for the second game in a row, Lemaire broke up the straight Z’s line in the third period when they were getting chances all night and could have been one shift away from ending the game. Again playing not to lose instead of playing to win. This time I get the explanation better, he wanted Zubrus as a center because (my words, not his) anyone not named Travis Zajac on our current roster really isn’t an NHL center. Maybe Rob Niedermayer can still be a fourth-liner, but he’s playing second-line now. Lemaire admitted he was giving Nieds the second too many minutes. We’re just now figuring out a five-hundred year old center can’t handle eighteen minutes a night? Shocking.

If you want to put Zubrus at center and restore Jamie Langenbrunner to the Zajac line, fine by me – just do it before the game, not during it when we’re trying to hold a lead and that line’s dominating. Worrying about Robbie Nieds’ icetime when he’s already gotten fifteen minutes seemed too little too late last night. Especially considering in his last two shifts which lasted under a minute combined, he was on the ice for both goals. So much for the checking line.

And lastly, as far as Brodeur getting testy when someone asked him about his workload in the postgame, please don’t. If you want the questions to stop then prove you can play 75 games and have a deep playoff run post-lockout at 38 years old. It’s one thing to do it when you’re 30 and have a defense led by two HOF’ers allow twenty shots a night, quite another to do it behind a patchwork defense facing thirty shots a night at a more advanced age. He sure hasn’t done it with a limitless workload since 2003, which was almost seven years ago. It’s no accident that he was rock-solid for 6 and 58/60th of the playoff series against the Hurricanes last year when he didn’t have the opportunity to run up a lot of mileage during the regular season and this being an Olympic year makes it worse.

Sigh, so I guess we’ll see how everything shakes out tomorrow against a dramatically revamped Leafs team. Too bad they didn’t wait till Tuesday to trade Vesa Toskala, they could literally have started three different goalies against us in eight days. Of course, it always adds a few fireworks when Jean-Sebastian Giguere mans the pipes against the Devils and I’m sure hoping to see him there Friday though I’m not counting on it. More likely he’ll start tomorrow at home and they’ll go back to Jonas Gustavsson on Friday, but who knows with the Leafs…maybe Brian Burke will trade for another goalie before the drop of the puck tomorrow.

It would be nice if the Sutters stopped doing our rival teams favors though, at least they’re making sure they have a lot more time for Red Deer by strip-mining the Flames and greasing the skids for both to be fired at the end of the year.

For now, there’s nothing new to report. According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie, the deal that would send Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust to the Rangers in exchange for Chris Higgins and Ales Kotalik is on hold. As to why, more from McKenzie:

There are reports that Kotalik isn’t prepared to waive his no-trade clause to go to Calgary but the indication is the Rangers were fully able and prepared to do this deal, but Calgary backed away at the last moment.

 It’s worth noting that the Flames play the Flyers tonight in Alberta and Jokinen is in the lineup. Prust may or may not play depending on what Brent Sutter opts to do. As McKenzie alluded to, usually players about to be traded don’t play which makes one wonder if this deal is kaput. Perhaps Calgary had a change of heart. But it’s uncertain what’s going on.

In today’s NY Post, Larry Brooks reported that the original trade included Matt Gilroy with Kotalik but the Flames changed their minds and asked for Higgins.The former Hobey Baker winner has been a disappointment posting four goals and five assists with 21 penalty minutes in 51 games this season. While the 25 year-old defenseman has a respectable plus-four rating, he’s struggled defensively rarely taking the body. The skating that we saw in an impressive preseason is there but the BU product hasn’t been consistent, even getting sent down to Hartford earlier.

It probably doesn’t help much that he plays with Wade Redden. However, it’s still his first pro season making the jump from college. While younger teammate Michael Del Zotto has turned heads straight from junior, it’s been more of an adjustment for Gilroy who signed a multi-year $3.5 million contract as a free agent to play with his favorite team. It would be a mistake to give up on him while dead weight (Redden and Rozsival) continue to embarrass the logo. Besides, he still has one more year to prove himself.

If the Jokinen trade is off, it would be typical. As I said earlier today, it’s the Rangers. The Dolan/Slats Error has been disastrous. Anything that can go wrong will. Hopefully, we’ll get some good news for once. Just don’t count on it.

UPDATE: Per Darren Dreger, it sounds like the trade might still be on and could be completed after the Philly-Calgary game tonight. Whether it is or not, could something please happen so we can end the suspense?