Playing with rosters

Larry Brooks poses a funny little question in yesterday's Post: "What if Wade Redden plays really well?" The idea is basically that if Redden realizes his entire career is on the line and actually has a fantastic training camp, if he's the best defenseman at camp, the Rangers basically have no contingency plan for that. This seems largely pedantic - personally, I can't imagine Wade Redden turning around and having a really good camp - but it's pretty funny to think about. Redden could screw us again by actually playing very well and forcing us to make a decision around that.

However, the really interesting part of this article comes much later, when Brooks is listing through our forwards. He claims that, much like with Redden, the team could be going into camp preemptively assuming that Sean Avery will be cut out of the picture. The theory is contingent on Todd White making a good case for himself at camp, which I think is a completely reasonable possibility. If it happens, Brooks argues, that will make Christensen, Anisimov, and White our top three centers, which will push other "centers" out to the wing. Brooks lists Frolov, Prospal, and Dubinsky as a possible top three left wings, and Gaborik, Callahan, and Drury as top three right. If this pans out, that pushes Avery down to the fourth line at best.

I think this is mostly pre-training-camp-panic-because-we-have-nothing-else-to-talk-about: no one's to say that White will make the team at all, or that Drury will be a top three winger, or anything else: we're going to be doing a lot of reconstruction at training camp, and this speculation is largely unfounded. But it's interesting to think about, anyway: we don't really know whether or not Avery and Torts (both are responsible) have figured out how to use Avery best. Let's hope they have. Meanwhile, I'm sure much more unfounded speculation is to come before this season gets underway.

Finally, from the hilarious Maple Leafs blog Down Goes Brown comes a list of this off-season's winners and losers: which teams did particularly well for themselves, and which did particularly poorly. The whole thing (as with everything this guy posts) is worth reading, but I mention it because the Rangers sit atop the winners list. The justification? "Their annual 'free agent signing which everyone agrees was the most outrageously over-priced mistake of the summer' ended up being a lot cheaper than usual this year." I'm gonna go ahead and agree and call that good news.