By these ugly things being leaked.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Is-this-the-New-York-Islanders-8217-new-black-?urn=nhl-wp10174

The Islanders were finally getting it right with the uniforms last season but there is a possibility that could be ruined next season. The horrifying thing that is revealed above was confirmed from the Islanders to be an option for their new third jersey. To me thats embarrassing that its even an option. Credit to "94 better not last a lifetime" for pointing it out that the jersey's have been leaked.

With Dubinsky and Fedotenko out, I wonder if Sather is looking for another winger to fill some shoes until guys get healthy. Because now we have Drury in the top 9 and a 4th line comprised of all Connecticut Whale players, that is hardly the recipe for success, maybe Sather is exploring options to keep us afloat until our bodies get back in the mix. Whats your thoughts?

To meet the 75 word minimum and once again what are your thoughts, the floor is yours.

As we get closer to Training Camp I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone would like to see as the lines. Now obviously none of this means anything as things change in Training Camp and injuries happen and etc. But I just thought it would be a fun thing to pass the time with.

For me it would look like this.

Dubinsky Prospal Gaborik

Frolov Anisimov Callahan

Avery Christensen Drury

Boogaard White? Prust

I would love to see Grachev and/or Mats Zuccarello Aasen make the team but with the logjam we have at forward, it doesn't seem logical. hopefully all of this clears up later on and or next season to give these talents a chance to play. Also I could also see spreading out the talent a little by having Christensen play top line with Gabby, and moving White to 3rd line and pushing Prospal to 3rd line left wing while having Avery center the 4th line(he has played center before) Now obviously the 4th line would be a terror to play against but could also be a liability defensively, either way it would be fun to see those 3 out there at the same time. 

now for Defense

Staal Girardi

Rozival Del Zotto

Eminger McDonaugh/Gilroy 

hopefully Redden is sent to Hartford, thats all I have to say for defense. 

So what does everyone else think?

With the Voros-Eminger Trade it is becoming apparent and more likely that Wade Redden and his 6mil a year will be buried in Hartford. Assuming this happens it gives us some cap space to work with to try and improve this team for the coming year and beyond. With Philadelphia in some cap trouble they are exploring options to trade away some players of good skill. First Gange comes to mind mainly because he was waived and his overall value to the team has diminished greatly. I would definitely not want Gange but there have been whispers of Carter being on the trading block. Now I know Carter is not the playmaking center we want for Gabby but he could be a great asset to put on the second line and create some great secondary scoring and make this team much deeper. Now in order for us to trade for Carter we would have to give to get and most likely have to give up one of Dubinsky or Callahan, and maybe a highly touted prospect or even more. Now obviously a lot of us would rather stay the course and not give up a fan favorite and a possible homegrown gem in the system. But there is another option worth exploring, maybe try and get another team involved. Many on this board have said there are probably a few teams if not more that would like to have a guy like Rozival as a veteran presence on their back end. Maybe their is a team out their that would take a Rozival and a Dubinsky/Callahan, and ship a young goalie prospect, established goalie or another skill depth forward to Philly and we would end up with Carter and still have about 5mil in cap room since Redden would be done on Broadway as well. Finding the right team to be the third party would be very hard because that team would need to have the ability to take on Rozival's contract as well as have a Goaltender of some worth that they are willing to trade away. Two teams that immediately come to mind with the Goalie situation is Toronto and Los Angeles. Both have goalies of value to spare, such as Gustavsson, Rynas, Giguere for Toronto and Bernier and Quick for LA. But I feel its unlikely to work with LA because do they really want Rozival and Dubinsky or Callahan for giving away Bernier or Quick??? I think not we would have to add in another prospect or draft pick to make that work and then it seems if that is the price why not just deal with Philly directly. Toronto would make a boatload of sense except for one factor they are trying to get rid of a 5 million dollar defenseman in Kaberle to begin with and taking on Rozi's contract would be counter productive. So the idea of a 3 way trade with the Flyers and whoever else to get rid of Rozival and add a Jeff Carter sounds mouth watering and enticing, although it sounds simple it may just be too good to be true. Any Thoughts?

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=533389

Solid Move I like Christensen a lot and he deserved a resigning. I hope It wasn't for too much though. I'm still annoyed Marc Staal hasn't been resigned yet and these damn trade rumors are scaring me too death. Either Way Christensen was a good move to lock up in my opinion, This probably means we will only sign one of Prospal or Demitra and I think Prospal deserves it. Go Sather and keep your signings smart lol.

Hey guys whats up, Im obviously a Ranger fan but this year I loved watching the Kings with guys like Kopitar, Simmonds, Brown, Richardson, and Quick, etc. Anyways at the deadline I always thought Kovalchuk would have been a perfect fit with you guys and make you guys a legitimate contender. With Kovy about to test the free agent waters this summer I wanna know if you guys think Kovalchuk would be a good fit. Personally I think it is a perfect fit and would help put you guys over the edge to become a legit contender next season and bring even more excitement to LA hockey. But since Im not the Kings expert I just wanna here your opinion. Thanks

 An article on NHL.com got me thinking some more about him. http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=530234  Earlier this year when playing for the Moncton Wildcats Kabonov racked up 14 pts in the first 11 games not too shabby, but then a wrist injury had him sitting out the next three months. When he returned he was only playing third line minutes which was annoying too him. He still managed to rack up 9pts in 11 games. Frustrated with his Ice time and the U-18 World Championships coming up he opted to leave Moncton and return to Russia to play for Mikhail Vasiliev and prepare for Worlds. This got everyone all riled up and people now saw Kabanov as a risk to draft and had him falling to the late 2nd to 3rd round instead of being a high 1st rounder. Vasiliev was persuading Kabanov to return to Russia, but then later Vasiliev cut Kabanov from the team. Understandably Kirill was pretty upset and stated that he would never pull the Russian National jersey over his head again. He even went as far to saying he wanted to change his citizenship. At NHL Scouting Combine Kabanov needs to perform as well as he can too repair his reputation and move him back into the 1st round at the draft. Now Kabanov tells NHL.com that he wants to stay in North America forever weather he he plays in the CHL AHL or NHL he would rather not go back to Russia.

My question to all of you is how high do you think Kabanov will be picked, and if any of his latest statements provide any more security in knowing that he wont just flee to Russia and the KHL. Also do you think there is any possibility the Rangers will pick him at 10, trade down to late first round to pick him or simply wait to the second round to see if they can get him their or just not even pay attention to him because they want no part of him.

Ive seen time and time again people are more than willing to part with Artem Anisimov, Evgeny Grachev, Dubinsky, Callahan, Chris Krieder, McDonagh, and even Derek Stephan for players like St. Louis, Spezza, and even to make room for guys like Plekanec, etc. Im am extremely curious why people are so willing to give up young players to trade for guys that are older, somewhat over the hill etc when it took those guys a couple years to get really good. I feel the problem in the past with this organization was that we didn't have much home grown talent and we constantly traded it away. Now that we are in the thick of a Youth movement people are calling to trade these guys away and it makes zero sense to me. I feel like the thirst for big name players is so great here in New York that we will never have a good team because everyone wants the big name and so does Sather so he would deliver and throw away a bunch of our great young talent. That would be the worst thing to ever happen. So I just want to say be patient with the young guys you'll learn to love them in a couple of years.

I thought this was pretty significant and exciting since he is the only college player on Team USA. Also this could be very good for his development as he will play with NHL level talent and get a look at what he is up against to make the team in the next year or two.

http://rangers.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=527633&navid=DL|NYR|home this is the link to the press release on the Rangers website.

Too many people are talking about revamping our offense next year like adding FA's such as Kovalchuk, Plekanec, Zherdev and RFA's like Ryan, Neil, and Backstrom. Although I love the idea of signing Plekanec to a reasonable deal or prying Nick Backstrom straight out of Washington's hands it is not what needs a complete make over for next season. I feel the best thing to immediately do for this team is too revamp the Defense to some extent. It is quite apparent that one of the main reason's this team cant win is because the defense is way too weak and we get buried in our zone far too often. The first step toward bettering this team should be Dumping Rozi or Reddens contract.(This is Known) once we dump Reddens(praying to god) then we can use that cap space to resign Staal and Girardi. We then should use the rest of that space to sign a top notch FA D-man such as Volchenkov, Hamhuis, or even a guy like Shane O'Brien as someone on here mentioned a while back because he could be just as solid and much cheaper. Then we should fill in the last spot with either Sangs or Gilroy. But as of late I don't see either of them having a future with this team so maybe we use them as trade bait to get rid of Rozi's contract as well and pick up another mid level D-man to fill out the third pairing. After we do that then with whatever space we have left thats what we should see what we can do with the offense to add more scoring. But like I said the Rangers Defense is more important right now than the Offense.

Ok in the thread about Zherdev on the home page Ive seen numerous people talking about re-signing Jokinen for 4mil 3.5 etc. Honestly I want no part of this guy even at 1mil a year. Jokinen has not been very good for us and his stats are not good at all. And the cap situation just wont allow it. I want to know why people want him to be a Ranger next year.

With everyone giving their opinions I feel I should give mine.

Ok The one glaring problem on this team is its defense. When you only have 1 reliable defensive defensman there is a big problem. Now to start I would Ideally waive Wade Redden to the minors but if that does not happen I would expect Michael Rozival to be traded so we will go with that. Then I would give Stall a 2mil raise which would be roughly 2.8mil which would leave us with roughly 14mil left. Now we have 4 defensmen under contract, Staal, Del Zotto, Gilroy, and Redden. For one of those spots I would bring up either Sangs or Heikkinen(assuming he is resigned). I would prefer Heikkinen because of his better physical and more defensive play of the puck. Then I would make a Free Agent splash and sign Dan Hamhuis for roughly 4mil. This will leave us with 10million and change, with 5 foward spots left to fill. The under contract fowards include, Gaborik, Callahan, Dubinsky, Drury, Avery, Anisimov, and Boyle. First I will fix Boyles wingers, and sign Prust to a .5 or .75 mill contract but for here we will go with .500mil, and then sign a fighter for another of the previous figures we will go with .75 for heaven sake. This would leave us with 8mil of cap room. Next I would Resign Prospal and Lisin to similar figures as this year, which would leave us with approxamatly 6mil left. Now we have one forward spot left and our position of real need is Center. Now FA centers are scarce in this years FA pool, and the only player I would go for would be getting Nicklas Backstrom with a Phil Kessel type deal. But this is highly unlikey and basically a pipe dream so we can go with two options. Either bring up a Forward such as Grachev or Stephan possibly??? or we can sign a decent FA. I would opt with the FA signing in not rushing either Grachev or Stephans development. Now Im going to pull a somewhat educated guess of a FA signing and say we sign Alexi Ponikarovsky for 3mil that would leave us with about 3mil left. There we can use for the resigning of Alex Auld and keep the rest for future transactions. Now I know I may be overpaying for people but that was just to be safe in knowing we can get them signed. So thats what I have to say about this.

I don't have much time so I wont write a lot, but Team USA's win over Canada is huge for the remainder of the tournament. Now I've said to my friends before the tournament started that I think Team USA will win Gold, Sweden will win Silver, and Canada will win Bronze. As shown with the Swiss bringing Canada to the shootout, and the Slovaks beating Russia, and now US upset over Canada, shows that the two huge favorites can be beaten for sure, and its anybody's tournament. I feel Brian Burke is a genius and USA is the most complete TEAM in this tournament, the Swedes have a pretty complete Team as well. USA has the skill players, the role players, and the goal tending to go all the way. They also have really good chemistry as well which might be the most important. In my eyes the Swedes are the only team that can contend with Team USA in those categories. Canada is essentially an all star team with star scorers from top to bottom. I personally don't see much chemistry coming from them besides the San Jose Line(Marleau, Thornton, Heatley.) Also I feel Mike Babcock is really hurting the team playing Marty, yes I will admit it Marty is one of the best all time, but he is not that good anymore and I feel Fleury could play a lot better. The Langenbrunner goal was terrible for him to give up and one that should have been stopped. I feel their talent is good enough to win Bronze but they don't have the chemistry to go all the way. I also feel the Russians wont medal because of there defense. Their defense is absolutely terrible and Nabakov would have to be absolutely stellar to have them medal, and that seems like it could be quite the task. So there is why I feel the two top heavily favored teams wont fair well because they are only favored on the big offensive names for both squads, but they lack something that is much more important, Team Chemistry. And that's why I feel the Gold game will be USA v Sweden because they are the two most complete TEAMS in the tournament. So much for not writing a lot, haha.