Roster Cuts

On Friday (the morning after our first preseason game), we cut our 63-man roster (I had previously posted 61, not knowing about two forwards named Chris Chappell and Devin DiDiomete) down to 38. Largely nothing surprising here. Of our 36 forwards, we sent Chappell, DiDiomete, Garlock, McKelvie, Soryal, and Tessier to Hartford, sent Bourque, Horak, McNaught, Thomas, Werek, Wilson, and Yogan to their respective junior league teams, and put Dupont on waivers (he cleared and is back with the 'Pack). On defense, we reassigned Baldwin, Klassen, Kundratek, Niemi, Parlett, and Williams to the Wolfpack, as well as Maggio and McIlrath back to the juniors. Finally, we sent goalies Parise and Talbot back to Hartford and Stajcer back to the OHL.

None of the 25 players I just named were dressed for the game Thursday night, so there were really no surprises here.

Then, Saturday morning, as you have no doubt heard, we got the big news: Wade Redden being reassigned to the Wolfpack. He, too, has since cleared waivers, and is expected to report to Hartford on Wednesday. I know I've been telling you for weeks and weeks that this was basically a done deal, that the numbers just didn't add up any other way, but damn if it didn't feel good to see it officially.

Side note: after Thursday night's game, I went around back to try to meet some players. Early on, we (the like 12 fans who thought this was worth it) saw Wade Redden drive out (he, um, didn't stop for autographs - the crowd for some reason was not interested). Given that he got cut Saturday, I think I saw Redden drive away from Madison Square Garden for the last time.

Yesterday morning, we made some tighter cuts. In goal, unsurprisingly, Chad Johnson (who didn't look good at all when I saw him) is back to the 'Pack. Up front, we sent down Grachev, Weise, and Zuccarello, and put Byers, Newbury, and Williams on waivers (they should clear and all six should be back in Hartford together). No huge surprises there - Zuccarello looked good sometimes but did not impress in an NHL-caliber way. Weise or Byers could have made an argument that they belong on the 4th line, but didn't really do anything to make me pissed off that they're gone.

On defense, we sent home 3 people who were in camp on tryouts: Brandon Manning, Garnet Exelby, and Alexei Semenov. This is where I get a little confused. I guess there's an argument that if you're in training camp on a tryout, you have to work even harder than if you have a contract? But based on what I saw (which was admittedly only 2 of 3 preseason games and none of camp), there's no reason McDonagh should still be around while Semenov is cut. Exelby looked decent - not great, but decent - and big - and Semenov looked all-around pretty good. McDonagh looked terrible. But I only saw him in one game, and perhaps he's done other exciting things at camp.

I was excited about Semenov and Exelby being big all over the place. But there are still big options around. I really liked what I saw from Valentenko, and I'll be excited if he makes the final cut. I'm surprised to see Mike Sauer still around, but I feel like I said that last year around this time also. I guess at the end of the day, I like that we're putting the emphasis on the kids that came from our system.

And so, we're left with a roster of 27, from which at least 4 more must be cut by opening night (October 9), a time span that includes 3 more preseason games in the next 4 days. Here's how those 27 people break down (pretend I wrote the word "probably" in all these category headings).

These 11 forwards make the team: Anisimov, Avery, Boogaard, Boyle, Callahan, Christensen, Drury, Dubinsky, Frolov, Gaborik, Prust

3 of these 5 forwards make the team: Fedotenko, Kennedy, Prospal, Stepan, White

These 4 defensemen make the team: Del Zotto, Girardi, Rozsival, Staal

3 of these 5 defensemen make the team: Eminger, Gilroy, McDonagh, Sauer, Valentenko

These 2 goalies make the team: Biron, Lundqvist

Of course, even those numbers aren't definitely accurate: we could end up with 1-4 of those 5 forwards, or with 2-5 of those 5 defensemen. These are just good guesses. My votes, which count for nothing, would be to keep Prospal, Stepan, and Kennedy, cutting White and Fedotenko, and to keep Eminger, Gilroy, and Valentenko, cutting McDonagh and Sauer. But they never ask me.

Yesterday and Today

We lost 3-2 in a shootout after coming back from a 2-0 deficit. Our shootout men were Kotalik, Lisin, Gilroy, Parenteau, Del Zotto, Prospal. I love the preseason.

On defense, apparently Gilroy played a great game, which is exciting news. Del Zotto was reportedly not as good as he had been, but Potter was apparently good enough that Torts has already announced him as someone who will survive this afternoon's cuts. On the flip side, Redden and Rozsival were again reportedly bad. Is there a word that denotes the extreme opposite of "surprise"? I feel like "obvious" isn't strong enough. Goddamn it I'm finding it very hard to keep withholding judgement here.

Up front, Prospal's line, centering Avery and Lisin, was reportedly great. This is promising news. I expect great things from Sean (who, predictably, was assigned a goalie interference penalty that disallowed a Lisin goal), but we're also going to need Prospal to have a great year, especially if we continue to not have Brandon Dubinsky on the team. Some scholars think Prospal's going to fill in as first line center regardless, at least as the season starts, on account of Dubinsky doing all of that not-skating-with-his-potential-wingmen-at-all that he's doing right now, compared to Prospal's actually-working-with-his-teammates.

Also up front, everyone is talking about how great Grachev is. That's fascinating, on account of how 19-years-old he is. But if he keeps playing great hockey, good for us. Here's a whole article about it.

This morning, we had a scrimmage at 9am. You should probably sit down. Are you sitting down? I'll wait. Good. Now, reports are that Marian Gaborik actually played in the scrimmage this morning! A whole scrimmage! And no word about anything breaking, either! Allelujah! At this rate, he'll play in an actual NHL game by sometime in November! Yahoo!

There will be one more scrimmage in about 10 minutes (1:00), and then later this afternoon, the first set of roster cuts gets made. For those of you who don't want to go find it yourselves, here again is our current 55-man roster. The word is that it will get cut down to 30 (or, by some reports, "approximately 30") later today. Thought exercise! Feel free to make guesses as to which 30 we keep and which 25 we dump. Most of it should be easy. If I have time later, I'll post some guesses.

Thought exercise bonus round! Of the 55 men on that roster, as you may know, 54 have been to camp and skated and stuff. The other one...hasn't yet. It's easy to keep one no-show on a roster of 55. Think he'll make a roster cut of 30? Probably. But how long can a coach be expected to keep a phantom roster spot open?

Stay tuned for roster cuts...