The Rangers are in a delicate situation with very little room for mistake. With Markus Naslund's $4,000,000 off the books for '09-10, the Rangers should immediately consider that money the Brandon Dubinsky and Ryan Callahan Re-up money. We also know that Gomez's contract heavily outweighs his point production, as does Wade Redden (which you can read about in Center on Value and Spezza Over Redden respectively).
If Nikolai Zherdev could play under John Tortorella more like he did under Tom Renney (as we discussed in What Happened to Zherdev?), then his roster spot should be a no-brainer renewal too.
Sean Avery's value has proven to be pretty much invaluable (Has it Fully Sunk In Yet?), as well as other keynotes (Blair Betts, Henrik Lundqvist, Marc Staal, and Dan Girardi).
With the these foundation players set, we can focus on pretty much the most obvious lacking cog to the Rangers machine: offense.
As we know, a lot of the Rangers money is locked up. Let us consider the concept of 'relative value.' Relative value could be defined as the dollar value a player's contract is worth per the amount of points this player has scored. Clearly a distinction should be made between defencemen-offense and offensemen-offense, as well as Time on Ice. However, looking at the Rangers' current roster ranked by their relative value of dollar/point production can really help us pinpoint the players that are the least worth it for offensive success.
Excluding Chris Drury (no-trade clause), Paul Mara and Derek Morris (UFA's), and Colton Orr (not paid to score), that leaves the bottom of our 'relative dollar/point value' 5 players to:
1. (D)Wade Redden _________ $250,000/point
2. (D)Michal Roszival _______ $166,667/point
3. (C)Scott Gomez __________ $126,845/point
4. (L)Lauri Korpikoski _______ $72,714/point *RFA
5. (R)Fredrik Sjostrom _______ $64,616/point *RFA
Clearly there is a huge gap between the lowest of the 3 in Redden, Roszival, and Gomez and 4 and 5 in Korpikoski and Sjostrom. So ideally to improve the dollar/point value of this team, we would need to remove these 3 players. We have developed quite a nice-reading group of defencemen in our farm system (Sanguinetti having just finished his first entire season in the AHL, Del Zotto turning heads since '08-09 training camp, Gilroy the Hobey Baker winner, and the likes of Dan Fahey and Corey Potter knocking on the NHL's door as well). If we could ship out just one of these poor-value defense, Redden or Roszival, we would not only improve our relative point value (by eliminating a dollar/point sinkhole), but we'd also be giving one of our eager youngsters a chance with the big-timers.
As far as Scott Gomez, eliminating his negative value and replacing him with a better relative dollar/point valued center would be the best option for the Rangers, seeing as how we have identified their poor play to the result of underachieving top-line dollar-voids. Although the chances that these particular players joining the Rangers is slim-to-none, here are the top 5 of this list.
1. Nicklas Backstrom____ $9,659/point
2. Henrik Sedin _______ $36,585/point
3. Marc Savard _______ $45,454/point
4. Ryan Getzlaf _______ $58,516/point
5. Jeff Carter _________ $59,523/point
Although all would be tremendous dollar/point upgrades from Scott Gomez, none of these top 5 would seem to leave their teams after having experienced excellent careers with their clubs in recent seasons.
Realistically, the Rangers should be looking at the following three centers, all falling in the top 30 point-scorers while also all having better relative dollar/point value then Gomez:
1. Mike Ribeiro_______ $64,102/point
2. Joe Thornton_______ $83,720/point
3. Jason Spezza_______ $95,890/point
Dallas, San Jose, and Ottawa (respectively) each had disappointing finishes to their seasons and will most likely be changing up their squads.
Please direct your attention to this google spreadsheet. I made this to analyze relative dollar/point value of the Rangers roster and compare it to the dollar/point value of the NHL's top 30 scorers.
Here is the direct link:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rQ3_-MlfU6NyF7MgGrnahKQ
Skaters highlighted in yellow are players that are absolutely not expected to be moved from their NHL team, or expected to not be moved from the Rangers roster. Players in the top 30 that are highlighted have either seen post-season success in '09 beyond the first round, or have seen a certain degree of recent loyalty to their team.)
I believe that both Nik Antropov and Nikolai Zherdev, if John Tortorella can nurture their natural talents, could be excellent offensive power-houses. They both had relatively-excellent dollar/point value ($34,745/point and $43,103/point respectively).
This post is intended to identify the biggest voids in the Rangers roster in terms of investments of offensive production. Readers are wholeheartedly recommended to visit the google spreadsheet sited in this discussion for a better perspective of the dollar/point value of the Rangers and the league's top scorers.
Coming up soon will be my own personal take on random players across the league that I have taken my own liking to, including discussion on why they would be good additions to the team!
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