Rick Nash!

Welcome to New York, Rick Nash! We trust that unlike Shea Weber, you'll enjoy living in the city.

Though the official trade call hasn't been made to the league yet, all sources seem to point to the trade being Dubinsky, Anisimov, Erixon, and a 1st-rounder to Columbus, in exchange for Rick Nash, some yet-unnamed AHL defenseman, and a conditional 3rd-rounder. Let's be clear: this trade is a steal for the Rangers, on all fronts.

NHL-ready value: Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov vs. Rick Nash. Clearly, this is where the Rangers win big; there's not a lot of cause to explain this. Player-for-player, you'd rather have a Nash than a Dubi and an Anisimov. Sad to see those guys go, as neither is bad at all, but come on.

Prospects: Of course, this is where Columbus makes up a little ground. But as it turns out, it's not much. We swap a 1st-rounder for a 3rd-rounder, which is of course giving the edge to the Blue Jackets, but we're discussing completely unknown players; neither of those picks is gonna be a top-5 overall. And we swap Tim Erixon for a defensive AHL-er named Steve Delisle, who probably isn't as good as Tim Erixon. Erixon probably has a decent upside, but it's all unproven. You'll never hear me complain about giving up someone who has the potential to be great for someone who is already very good.

Incidentally, the condition on the 3rd-rounder is that we give it back if we make it to the Cup Finals. If Nash pushes us to the Cup Finals, do you think anyone's gonna be complaining about a lost pick?

Price: Cry cry cry, Rick Nash costs a cap hit of $7.8 million, blah blah blah. Check out what happens when you use a little math before you complain about math, though. Dubinsky's cap hit is $4.2 million. Anisimov's is $1.875 million. Erixon's is $1.75 million. Mr. Calculator just called and told me that adds up to $7.825 million. So, assuming Erixon plays in the league next season either way, the Rangers actually save money under the cap next year.

(And Nash is only 34 when this contract ends - we're not exactly talking Brad Richards-length, here. At 28, Nash is in his prime, not on his way out of it.)

So I'm just not interested in hearing Ranger fans complain because they think every contract given to anyone over the age of 25 is Scott Gomez.

All in all, the Rangers' third and fourth lines got worse this off-season, and their first and second lines got better. I'm sad to see all those great character middle-of-the-pack guys go (Dubinsky, Mitchell, Prust, Fedotenko, Anisimov). But let's look at who's left, even assuming the Rangers make no further moves (sorry that I've flipped some wingers, it made organization easy):

Gaborik - Richards - Nash
Hagelin - Stepan - Callahan
Pyatt - Boyle - Kreider
Rupp - Halpern - Asham

All of last season, we talked about how the Rangers were a team full of 2nd- and 3rd-liners, and about how the coach didn't trust his bottom 6 enough. We all assumed the solution was that he had to learn to coach differently. Maybe instead, the solution was to give him a team that suits him better. When I look at this lineup, I'm inclined to give ice time the way Torts does, too. Maybe this is the team Torts needs, to take them to the next level.

And now, imagine if the Rangers can still land Shane Doan (there's plenty of cap space, by the way). This could be a lot worse, is all I'm saying.

The only problem now is that there's gonna be a work stoppage, and we won't actually get any hockey.

Midterms?

I know, I know: weeks between posts. There was a Christmas/New Years break, during which I was not home a lot, and I'm still at this new job. I hope I can continue writing this, but it's possible I won't be able to. I'm sorry, 4 people.

Anyway, let's talk about the New York Hockey Rangers. The good news is that, in three consecutive awful games - almost certainly the worst 3-game string we've put together this season - we came away with three points. We beat the Devils playing shitty hockey, because the Devils are just awful. Then, we stole a point in Tampa playing shitty hockey by relying on the two big-talent names on the team: Lundqvist made a bunch of great saves, and Gaborik scored with 30 seconds left to push it into OT (in which we lost on the first shot). Finally, we got the 0 points we deserved by playing shitty hockey in Florida, where a bunch of old, retired Ranger fans apparently live.

My father said something to me the other day. I will tell you what it was, because it will act as a nice lead-in to my point. That is a Writers' Trick, using a personal touch as an introduction to a grander idea. Here is what he said: "Come on, do we really believe that this is all due to missing Callahan?" And, I mean, of course not. Callahan's great, but he can't be the skill difference between the team that beat the Caps and Pens by an aggregate 11-1 and the team that lost to the Lightning and Panthers by an aggregate 5-1. So I start to wonder: what's the actual problem here?

Yes, the Rangers were playing a little over their heads. But more than that, they were winning games through sheer force of will. Just shooting pucks all the time, crunching bodies constantly, and winning the possession game on every shift - there was even a game or two in there wherein we won more faceoffs than we lost (!) - helped us beat hockey teams that are really more skilled than we are. So where does that stuff come from, and where, more importantly, did it go?

At the risk of being kicked out of the VORPies, I'm ready to call it "chemistry." More in hockey than in discrete-event-driven baseball or in set-play-at-a-time football, knowing what your teammate is thinking is important. You don't have time to call plays, so you have to either look around and make decisions based on what you see or put the puck where you know it's going to belong. I've yelled and screamed about it a lot, but Tortorella refuses to use consistent line combinations, ever. Other than a few guidelines (double-shift Gaborik somewhere, make sure Avery doesn't break 10 minutes of ice time for some reason), there's really no consistency from one period to the next. He just puts out some guys and tells them to skate together.

With two exceptions, of course. For most of the season, he has consistently kept Boyle and Prust together (with some additional wing, most often Fedotenko), and he has consistently kept Dubinsky and Callahan together (with some center, most often Anisimov). Those two pairs have been consistent pretty much all season. Quickly now, close your eyes, and name who you think are the 5 most effective Ranger forwards of the season - from opening night through today.

Did Dubi, Cally, Prust, and Boyle all make your list? At least 3 of them did, I bet. Quite possibly all 4. They may even be the top 4 of your 5. Now, I'm not claiming that this is all because they have been paired together all season. And I know some of this is circular logic - in part, Torts has been keeping them together because it's worked. No one's saying Frolov would have 35 points right now if only he'd been on a consistent line with Christensen and Weise all season. But I also feel like Marian Gaborik might be a little more productive right now if he'd been given the chance to gel with anyone at all.

Which brings us back to Callahan. If you think of Dubi-Cally and Prust-Boyle as the only two "line pairs" we've got, then the loss of Callahan means the loss of one of our only two units (and the better one, at that). So, then, yeah. Maybe this is all on Callahan.

In other news, defense. After half a season (yes, folks, tonight is the 41st game of the Rangers' 85th anniversary season - after tonight, we will officially be halfway through the regular season) of playing mediocre-to-bad defense and not really scoring points at a pace to make up for it, Michael Del Zotto (2-7-9, -1) has been reassigned to Connecticut. Good. He's a kid, and time on the Whale will help him. I have no use for a defenseman who forgets how to back-check so he can put up 20 points a season. Sorry, Mike Green. Let DZ go back and learn to play defense, then come back up when he's ready.

Meanwhile, what an opportunity for Gilroy, who has played out of his head since he's back as a lineup regular, and I couldn't be happier about it. I like the guy a great deal, and I'd love to see him succeed here. He looked very good in the few games for which he replaced DZ, before DZ returned to one more before being officially sent down. Also, we've called up Ryan McDonagh in case we need a 7th. Interesting move. I like the personnel choice, but if we're not gonna play him, why not just leave him in Connecticut getting ice time until we need him? Meh, maybe I don't understand how hockey works.

And speaking of defensemen, will I be the world's least popular Ranger fan if I point out that over this 3-game skid, the one Ranger that really stood out making smart plays and generally being an asset on the ice was Michal Rozsival? Cause he really has been good.

Anyway, things aren't all bad for the Rangers - it was just 3 bad games, so far. And in a division with the Flyers and Pens (due to the way the playoffs now work, if we can't pass either of them, we can't end up above 5th in the conference), we're not doing so badly for ourselves. Maybe the Rangers will play a game that isn't painful to watch, tonight when the Hurricanes visit. We can hope so. That's all I've got for the Rangers, but before we go, does anyone know what time it is? 'Cause it looks to me like it's Kovalwatch!!!! time!

At the risk of this becoming a Kovalchuk-themed blog, I had to do another edition today, because of last night's gem. The Devils and the Wild are tied 1-1 a minute or two into the third. And then this thing somehow happens:



It's hard to see, but as Puck Daddy explains, Wild player Clayton Stoner (tee-hee) is trying to dump the puck into the Devils' zone. Ilya the Rich moves in to check Stoner, and the dump-in takes a weird bounce off of his (Kovalchuk's) stick back toward the boards. It then takes a weird bounce back off the boards towards the Devils net, which Johan Hedberg (in for an overrated Brodeur) has vacated so that he can go retrieve the puck along the boards. Hedberg can't get back in time, and the Wild go up 2-1, the score by which they would end up winning the game.

I know, Kovalchuk did nothing wrong on this play. But that does not make it any less hilarious! Nor does it make it any less of a minus one on his increasingly astounding stat sheet. It brings him to a -29, undisputed worst in the league, and on pace for a -60.9 on the season. That would be the 9th worst in the recorded history of the statistic, from what I can tell. Hopefully that projection crosses -61 soon, at which point he will jump in the rankings. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, the Devils have found themselves a full 8 points behind even the Islanders, who have 2 games in hand on them. Their 22 points in 39 games puts them on pace to finish the season with 46.25 points. For perspective, since the Rangers won the Cup, 3 teams have finished with fewer points than that: the '95-'96 Senators, with 41; the '97-'98 Lightning, with 44; and the inaugural '99-'00 Thrashers, with 39 (the last being the only one since they started giving points for losing in OT). This is a Very Bad Team, is the point.

Man, this is a fun feature to write.

Role reversals

Well, that was a weird weekend of hockey. Mostly, everyone did what everyone else was supposed to do.

On Saturday night, we played the Blue Jackets in Columbus. The game went back and forth pretty well, resulting in a 1-1 tie on traded power play goals after 2. That was when the Rangers skaters and King Henrik switched roles. It was the skaters who stepped up their game in the third and kept the Rangers in it. Granted, they didn't so much score any goals, but the majority of play was in the Jackets' zone, and I was actually pretty optimistic about the outcome, despite the 1-1 tie lasting late.

And it was Lundqvist, who usually spends these tied third periods standing on his head to bail out a squad that does nothing to earn it (either offensively or defensively), who himself made the awful play that gave the Blue Jackets the tiebreaker and eventual game-winner with 5 minutes left.

Now, I'd love to give Rick Nash (who scored this goal and the not-quite-empty-netter at the end, after assisting on Columbus's first goal) all the credit in the world for breaking this tie late in the third - it's the kind of thing he does, and he's the kind of guy I love giving credit to. But this was about as soft a goal as I've seen (excepting this one). "Bad-angle shot" doesn't really depict just how bad an angle it was: Nash basically shoveled it toward the left post, from the goal line at the boards, with absolutely no one else anywhere near either him or the crease.

After the game, Lundqvist unsurprisingly took full responsibility for the loss, and really, what else is there to say? Things like this happen sometimes, he's still one of the best goalies in the league, and if Hank could be our biggest liability in every game, I think we'd be doing just fine, thank you very much. For the first time I can remember, Hank making a mistake doesn't make me go back to Brooks's quote, "neither blameless nor to blame." This time, he actually was to blame. Which, all things considered, may be more a reflection of the skaters around him getting better than of anything else. Or maybe I'm a little too optimistic.

Anyway, continuing with weeeeeird hockey, last night, the Caps came to the Garden. And in another role reversal, it was the Rangers whose powerhouse offense came through for 7 goals from 6 different players (8 different Rangers had assists), while the Caps were shut out and dumbfounded. The game was almost scoreless through one until Prust opened the floodgates with 3 minutes left in the first, and then the flood itself followed in the second. The offense never stopped, and the Capitals never got started.

It was awesome!!

I don't really know what else to say about this game. Lundqvist earned himself a league lead-tying 5th shutout, mostly on hard work in the third, after the Rangers had already given him plenty of room to work with. Dubinsky had a Gordie Howe hat trick (I love that we keep earning these), fighting Ovechkin a few minutes after scoring, then assisting on Cally's first in the third. Yes, Dubinsky fought Ovechkin. It was awesome. After the game, it's worth noting Dubinsky's comments went something like "it was totally respectful, he's great at hockey, etc." cf. Crosby.

The game's final 5 minutes devolved into brawl time (in which penalties were assigned to basically everyone, except Brian Fahey, who got away with no minutes based on the NHL's "it's cool, you did it to Avery" clause), which was also fun to watch. Basically, this game was candy for my life, and everything is great.

Nothing to write home about

I have a whole block of free time at work right now, and there is somehow nothing to say. I haven't gotten back to my big scary spreadsheet, so my big number thing isn't ready yet, and there's nothing I want to say about last night's game. I can't even post another Kovalwatch yet, because my last post was about him! It's so hard to be me.

There's nothing I want to say about last night's game because I don't want to put forward more effort than the Rangers did. Talk about sleeping through half a game. If we're honest, we didn't see a ton more effort than that in the home-and-home against the Islanders, but we won anyway, because it was just the Islanders. It took Prust's shorthanded goal to wake the Rangers up, and we proceeded to play an okay second half of a game, just not good enough to actually score any more goals.

It's technically true that we lost the game in the last 2:30, within which Ottawa finally took the lead and then sealed it with an empty netter, but we truly lost it in the first 30:00, during which we played flat hockey. The Frankenline of Avery, Christensen, and Gaborik just can't produce, due to it not making any sense. Gaborik is a good goal-scorer who can shoot the puck fast and hard, Christensen can make clever stick moves now and then, and Avery can chip the puck in deep, maintain possession, and win one-on-one battles. Individually, those are each useful, but no one on this line seems to ever know what anyone else on it is doing.

Dubinsky and Callahan have definitely taken a step back basically since Gaborik returned. Some of this is possibly mental: the pressure is no longer on them to step up and lead (only, it is, because Gaborik isn't actually going to win games by himself). I also wonder if some of it is due to the center rotation: there was some chemistry with Anisimov (though I don't necessarily disagree with the switch to Stepan). However, I'm sad to say a good deal of it is likely regression to the mean. I love Brandon Dubinsky, but he was never going to stay on the pace of 10 goals in 13 games.

Anyway, it's only one loss right now, and we shouldn't be running to the hills or anything, but it's time we started to see some real top-line production. Drury and Prospal can't come back soon enough. On them, word is that Drury has been skating in full equipment, passing but not yet shooting. There's some hope that he could return in 7-10 days. Prospal is also skating, but not yet in equipment (of course, there is still no timetable for him). It would really be nice to have these guys back, huh?

Avery I named my dog after you

So, first of all, you should know that something big is in the works here, involving lots of numbers. Maybe not so big in terms of importance, but it's involving lots of arithmetic on my part. So stay tuned for that. But for now:

I'm putting a kibosh on complaining about lines, on account of we don't so much use lines anymore. Also, Avery's getting the ice time he deserves (13:57 tonight), and I like that. Some good games over break, tonight was not so good. But props go to Avery, who has been playing good hockey. I didn't name my dog after him (I don't own a dog), but this girl did:



Kevin DeLury of New York Rangers Blog is running a big campaign to write him in as an All-Star, which I strongly suggest you participating in. Go vote here or text "Sean Avery" to 81812. Anyway, I only bring it up because of Avery's response to it: "That's great. I will hopefully make the team, and I'll be the first player ever to get an instigator penalty at an NHL All-Star game. That'll be amazing, right?" I love this guy.

Credit also goes out to Brandon Dubinsky, who played a good game tonight, and to Michal Rozsival, who I think has looked in his couple of games back as good as he's looked in two seasons. I'm really glad to have him back.

That's all for Ranger talk tonight, so I wanna make a quick joke about how every time they say Preds goalie Pekka Rinne's full name, it sounds like something Vinnie Barbarino would call a classmate, and then it's time for another edition of Kovalwatch!!!! How have things been since we checked in with the most anticipated off-season athlete signing since 2010's LeBron James? Well, first of all, the Devils still find themselves just above the Oilers and Islanders, not quite at the bottom of the league (although if Edmonton and Long Island win their games-in-hand, Jersey finds themselves back in that #30 spot). At 8-14-2, the Devils are on pace to finish the season with 61.5 points, good enough for the bottom 3 spots in the league every season since the lockout. Hell, 61.5 would put the Devils in the 24th spot back in 1998-'99, the final season that games couldn't be worth 3 points, and there were only 27 teams.

Meanwhile, Ilya himself, whose contract, for those of you who are missing the point, is still 15 years for $100 million, is looking at 4-6-10, putting him on pace to finish the season with 18.2 goals and 27.3 assists. Other players with 4 goals and 6 assists? Blackhawks Jake Dowell ($1.05m/2yr) and Bryan Bickell ($1.625m/3yr), Tampa Bay's Sean Bergenheim ($0.7m/1yr), and Penguin Tyler Kennedy ($1.45m/2yr), among others. The only one whose contract comes anywhere near Kovalchuk's on the list is Zdeno Chara, who is tied for 7th in the league with a +12 rating. Ilya's rating? An abysmal -11.

Minus goddamn eleven. On pace to be worse than -50 for the season. This would be the worst +/- in the NHL since at least 1997-'98. The worst since then has been Rico Fata's -46 in 2003-'04, but NHL.com does not have this data prior to '97-'98. So, quite possibly the worst in a good deal longer than that. Just a total detriment to his team. On pace for 45.6 points and -50.1. At $6.67 million. And this is his prime, no less.

See, guys? Even when you lose to the Penguins, there's always the Devils to look at. Things could be worse.