Spezza over Redden

Remember when we made that big signing for Wade Redden last summer and we all thought 'Hey, Ottawa went to the Stanley Cup Finals just in '07, they had to have been doing something right.."

We took a $6.5 million dollar guess (for each the next several years) at what they were doing right defensively by signing veteran defenseman, Wade Redden. Since joining the Rangers, Redden has had 3 goals (career lowest), 23 assists (third career lowest), for 26 points (2nd career lowest), and a -5 rating (career lowest).

We needed that defenseman, though, to fill the void we had made in releasing Fedor Tyutin to the Columbus Bluejackets in exchange for Nikolai Zherdev. What if (and on the off-day between Game 6 and Game 7 when your team is the 1000-1 underdog, I'm sure lots of people are formulating What If's), we had held onto the 4-year deal that we had just signed Fedor Tyutin, and gone after Jason Spezza out of Ottawa instead?


What if we had kept Tyutin over Redden? We'd have maintained the #1 Girardi-Tyutin pairing that we so admirably built. We'd have kept our #1 hitter and #2 shot-blocker of '07-08 in Tyutin, we'd have more contract flexibility in following years (which many are already seeing a bitter horizon), and we'd have a durable young player in our system that we birthed and nurtured to a point of number-1-defenseman value.

With Tyutin on instead of Redden, we would of been able to make a deal for Jason Spezza, who ended up being waved around for sale like a bootleg Giants Superbowl XLIII shirt after last year's embarassing failure to the Philadelphia Eagles. The difference between Redden's salary and Tyutin's salary (roughly $3.5 mil), along with the Zherdev contract ($2.5 mil) would of provided a nice paycheck for the Ottawa centre, who has proven that he can go all the way to the top at just 25, while maintaining our faster, tougher, younger defense.

The personnel decisions on the Rangers may leave you scratching your head. What if Glen Sather was a bit more like Donnie Walsh. What if our primary concern was the long-term future? What if any long-term contract we signed would only be given to players who have proven their talents for at least 1 or 2 years [on lesser Contracts] first? After '08-09, it is gonna be a long road behind Gomez, Drury, Redden, and Roszival.

Gotta mention, I'm also a huge fan of Jason Spezza's former OHL coach's training regime which has seemed to generate some real tough, high-scoring players.