More thoughts on roster

Reading this Larry Brooks article and trying to make heads or tails of it. The point of the piece is that the Rangers traded a 2010 pick to the Kings for 4th line center Brian Boyle. Yet another sign we won't be retaining Blair Betts. This makes me hell of sad. I guess we figure Boyle's gonna be way cheaper? But fine, whatever. The point Brooks makes is that we're sad to see the 3rd round pick go, because we could maybe have used it to get Phil Kessel from Boston. Could we have picked up Kessel while keeping room to afford a full roster by holding onto that one pick? Brooks thinks so. If he's right about that, then yeah, the Boyle move was horrible, because yes of course I would give up those picks to have Phil Kessel. Is that realistic? No idea, and I don't care anymore, 'cause it's off the table now.

But in making this point, Brooks brings up a lot of roster info that I'm having trouble understanding. The first point Brooks makes is very interesting. Boyle comes with the modest price tag of $832,000. Remember how I said we weren't going to offer Sjostrom a qualifying offer? Yeah, the number we failed to offer him was $882,000. So Boyle's worth .83 AND a pick, but Sjos isn't worth .88? That's interesting. I guess we really, really figure we're going to have to let Betts go, and we need a cheap replacement??

Then Brooks goes on to make a claim about money and players that I'm having some trouble filling out. But to get you there, first I need to fill you in on a few details I've neglected:

1. Back on May 1, the Rangers extended Valiquette's contract for another year for $725,000. That's important to get down. I couldn't be happier about it - as I've said many times, there's not a starter/backup pair in the league I'd rather build my team around.

2. It's time we mentioned prospects. I was gonna do a whole entry on just that, but I'm done saving the info: we should talk about it briefly now. Matt Gilroy, defenseman from Boston University, won 2009's Hobey Baker Award (given annually to NCAA Hockey's best individual). Also, he signed with us. This is not a small deal. He is supposedly fan-fucking-tastic. He's costing us $1.8 million, and that seems totally worth it to me. I'm...dreaming of a Gilroy-Staal top pair... (that was White Christmas)

3. Remember that Artem Anisimov character? We signed him for around $0.8 million. Whatever, sure.

4. In addition to talking about how Antropov, Sjostrom and Betts likely won't be back with us, Brooks mentions that we "won't have unwanted free agent Colton Orr." So, add him to the list of people we don't want back. You know: the fourth line. For some reason.

So, anyway, the point is that Brooks makes this claim that we have already committed $49.4 million to 2 goalies, 5 d-men, 5 centers, and 4 wingers (leaving us $7.4 million to sign a couple of defensemen and like 9 wings). I'll grant that we're in trouble similar to that, but I'm having trouble getting as far as he did. Here's what I have:

2 goalies (Lundqvist, Valiquette) = 6.9 + 0.7 = 7.6
5 d-men (Redden, Rozsival, Girardi, Staal, Gilroy) = 6.5 + 5 + 1.6 + 0.8 + 1.8 = 15.7
4 centers (Drury, Gomez, Anisimov, Boyle) = 7.1 + 7.4 + 0.8 + 0.8 = 16.1
3 wings (Avery, Voros, Zherdev) = 1.9 + 1 + 3.3 = 6.2
Total = $45.6 million for 2 goalies, 5 d-men, 4 centers, and 3 wingers, assuming Zherdev accepts our offer.

Now, that's not great as it is, but I'm trying to figure out where Brooks gets an extra wing and an extra center, especially totaling $3.8 million. Brooks specifically mentions that his numbers don't include Callahan (who, being up for arbitration, will likely resign with us very soon for significantly more than his current wage). Even if the numbers include Dubinsky (who, being an RFA, will end up back with us for right around the $633,333 he made last season), then I'm still a $3.2 million winger short of Brooks's numbers. The only person I can think of that might possibly fit this description would be Cally, who Brooks specifically excluded. So: maybe my numbers are a little bit off, is the point. But still, this is an approximate picture of where we are. To recap:

Under Contract
Centers:
Scott Gomez
Chris Drury
Artem Anisimov
Brian Boyle
Wings:
Sean Avery
Aaron Voros
Defensemen:
Wade Redden
Michal Rozsival
Dan Girardi
Marc Staal
Matt Gilroy
Goalies:
Henrik Lundqvist
Stephen Valiquette

Probably signing with us soon
Centers:
Brandon Dubinsky
Wings:
Nikolai Zherdev
Lauri Korpikoski
Ryan Callahan

Probably leaving us soon
Centers:
Blair Betts
Wings:
Nik Antropov
Fredrik Sjostrom
Colton Orr

No idea whatsoever about Derek Morris or Paul Mara, but I'd expect one or both to go. That would leave us wanting to make a couple of defensemen and 4 or so wings out of basically no money. I imagine we've got to make some kind of deal this summer. Once again, here we are, over the summer, wondering about the New York Strangers. Again, it's all speculation, and again, I'm feeling...cautious. I'll keep you posted. Leave your thoughts in comments!