Come on... we all knew it was going to happen. We(ranger fans) just didn't want it to happen.

Marian Gaborik unfortunately left the ice last night during the third period of Rangers victory over the Coyotes.

But what do the Rangers do now? Their leading scorer, on the shelf possibly. Before we all jump off the ledge lets look at some options and/or possibilities of whats to come.

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a couple of you noticed my awesome keystone light hat equipped with a handy bottle opener.

great for when you are in New Orleans and your team is being shown that their back up safety is not good. Sitting in the second row, i got a pretty good Black and Gold view of things that were going on. Sitting to my right were a gaggle of giants fans from new jersey and alabama of all places. through a certain LSU centers father they got their tix. Me? well lets just say i know a certain blogger with some sweet seats.

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when you look at this ranger team, you see potential, and you see downside.
This is why the majority of "experts" call them a middle of the pack team. For them to say that shows that if the rangers bust, then obviously no one stepped up this year, and if they break out and are a top 4 seed, then obviously gaborik and the young guns stepped it up. All this means is that they predict some things to go right for the rangers, and some things to go wrong.

Things that could go right/wrong:

-Gaboriks health

-Chemistry between all the new faces not meshing

- the old guard(drury, redden, roszival, etc) show more signs of aging

- the young guns(MDZ, Gilroy, anisimov, etc) show they arent ready

- the new core(callahan, Dubinsky, Staal) arent the answer

thats alot of things that can go either way, some we wont know till after a year or two. But the fact that the rangers need more than a few things to go in their favor shows they aren't a certain playoff team.

We as ranger fans see every nook and cranny of this team and we all know it can be great, but after following this team forever we all know how blah it can be.

One thing we should all be looking at win or lose this season isnt donald brashear or ales kotalik... Not Drury or higgins or redden for that. What we should look at is our young players developing. Callahan, Dubinsky, and Staal lead the way for guys like Del Zotto, Gilroy, Anisimov and others who might come up and down.

thats the future of the team there. The New NHL(post Lock-out) is all about developing a core of young talent and building around it.

Albeit pitt and washington got a bunch of gems in the draft a few years back in the names of Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin, Backstrom and semin. Throw in J. Staal MA Fleury and Mike Green and these two teams are set for years.

this will probably NEVER happen for the rangers becasue they are never a bottom of the barrel team like the islanders.

...Ryan McDonagh?

The rangers traded away Gomez for Higgins and Ryan McDonagh and i havent heard a lick of news since.

Did I miss something? Was this guy in training camp? is he under contract? was he traded? was i dreaming that they aquired this guy?

Not for nothing but this guy was near the top of our prospects chart since we aquired him. All this talk about Gilroy and MDZ and Sanguinetti, what ever happened with Ryan McDonagh?

Browsing through hockey blogs i came across a top 10 sleeper teams of this year.

According the The Bleacher Report, The rangers are #9 on the top 10 sleeper teams this year.

go there and read for yourself. Let the optimism begin

althought nothing profound is said in their blurb about the rangers, its a sign that the hockey world sees the change on the team as having potential. This also shows the world that the rangers are still a big WHAT IF.

Now i know ive been complaining alot about the rangers of late, but this really irks me. Everyone knows the deal. Nik Zherdev will most likely NOT be a ranger in the very short future.

But here is what drives me crazy about glen sather.

The man simply doesnt know what he is doing. He would rather pay Wade Redden an incredible amount of money for a long time, than pay a YOUNG and incredibly skilled top 6 foward a good amount for 1 year.

 He trades away a solid d man in fedor tyutin and gets zherdev. Now youre gonna dump zherdev and we are stuck for a couple more seasons with redden?! It doesnt make sense to me at all.

Who would you ranter have on your team? Zherdev or Redden? I dont even think you can say Redden and mean it. Not at that salary. Even with a lower salary, i wouldnt want him.

Zherdev will be 25. redden is in his 30s and on the decline. He isnt going to have a breakout season. Zherdev could.

If Sather didnt smoke crack a year ago before he signed wade redden, then dubinsky and zherdev would be signed no problem.

Ive been a zherdev fan for a long time now. Yes he is like alex kovalev. Remember how kovalev was on Pitt? imagine a few seasons like that from Zherdev on the rangers? We arent talking about Bobby Holik, or Anson Carter here. Two of the biggest hacks to come to broadway.(but i think anson carter + money for jagr was the greatest deal ever.) We are talking about an actual skilled player. He is unmotivated at times yes... but i can deal with that if he scores 70 points. i think his potential is totally worth it for this season.

Gaborik for 7 mil... the guy is made of glass. At least Zherdev will play games for you and give you the potential of being a kovalchuk. gaborik gives you the potential to be pat lafontaine but with groin injuries. Think of him as a Jose Reyes of the hockey world.

I leave you with this brain buster:

Are the Rangers going to sign this guy? or was this trade a move to just free up the roster. I can see them NOT signing him and trying to trade him with some other baggage(hopefully Redden) to dump salary to make room for a Heatley trade.

What is the deal with RFAs when do they have to be signed by? Who is left for the Rangers? Dubinsky, Zherdev? Any other key people out there that need to be signed?

I do not know about the rest of Ranger Nation, but is anyone else out there ready for another disappointing season?

Its like waking up christmas morning and finding a beautifly wrapped gift under the tree and opening it up to find that it has been filled with dog crap.

This is how I feel about Glen Sathers Gifts to the ranger fans over the tenure of his stay.

We dont need to go down the list of past rangers disappointments, because there has been plenty.

This year we have Lost fan favorite Colton Orr and replaced him with a piece of garbage called Brashear. Why? Because they play the same game? WRONG. Orr was getting better while brashear is just a goon. Dont mistake my comments for me saying Orr is going to score 20 goals EVER, but he was a nice 4th line energy guy who could basically beat the hell out of anyone. He did stupid things too, he wasnt an angel. But he most certainly didnt cheap shot Mara one year and then dismantle Betts in the playoffs jsut last postseason. Its almost as if we got Bush out of Office and replaced him with public enemy #1 Osama Bin Laden. (ok ok maybe not THAT dramatic but you get my point).

This is all for a 4th line player. Now we move up the ladder. Glen trades GOMEZ! what he gets back in return is a decent 2nd line scorer and a highly touted prospect. WOW GLEN!!! you did something good. I liked gomez and i think he is such a better player than how he played on the rangers, but good riddance, i couldnt deal with a 60 point scorer at 7 million dollar cap hit.

So glen becomes liek a little boy in a candy shop with a $20 bill and spends it on a jawbreaker! THOSE BIG ONES. They look like a great investment and  cool in all those colors but in the end we eat it( or lick it) for about 20 minutes and say what the hell was i thinking getting this!? i could have gotten a bag of swedish fish and sour patch kids. or a combo of other things that would be SO MUCH BETTER. So basically Glen goes and gets GABORIK the jaw breaker. High Risk High Reward. We can talk about one vs the other but im sure youre sick of that. Gaborik costs more than Gomez and he might play 1/4 of the games he did which means he returns alot less production which = sucks.

The rangers let Sjostrom go. there goes part of the rangers strength. then penalty kill. when betts leaves too, then there goes 3/4 of the pk that was 2nd in the league. betts gomez and sjostrom.

The rangers get Kotalik. Many speculate he will replace Zherdev. WHAT?! AT 3 Mill?!

Glen sather is constantly overpaying for mediocre talent. i could only imagine what he thinks he is worth. if the avg GM makes 2 million a year. he would estimate himself at like 10. If youre still reading this i am amazed and thank you. Im pissed as hell, and sick of watching these overpaid underachievers flop year to year.

Please Add your own rants, id love to hear them. Please try not to be optimistic... Unless there really is something to be 100% optimistic about. Like maybe jon tavares got traded to the rangers for redden zherdev and rozy

Okay, so the Rangers dont make a big splash on day so far. Hossa gone to chicago forever(12 years for a 30 year old dude?) But seeing teams like philly with pronger on their roster, seeing the islanders get a healthy NHL caliber goalie and Tavares, and the penguins still have Crosby and Malkin. So what do the rangers do? well they trade their "number one center" for an above avg 2nd/3rd line scoring winger.

Okay that deal moved a TON of cap space to sign a couple guns for this season right?

well thats the thinking among Ranger fans. So early in the day we see fan favorite Colton Orr goto Toronto. In my opinion I dont mind seeing he leave the team because the team blows offensively and his 5 points didnt really help. The one thing I dont want to see is when Toronto plays the rangers and he inevitably will beat up whoever they might replace him with...

Enter Donald Brashear. The man who took out Blair Betts from the postseason last year with a Douchebag play. Im sure that will make for good team chemistry if they decide to bring Blair back into the fold... considering they will probably play on the 4th line together. Brashear can throw punches, but in the NHL today you need to do more than that. He is a big body that they could put in front of the crease on the Powerplay, but id rather see Avery do that because he actually has talent.

Im not too thrilled with the rumors of Heatley coming to the team unless Sather somehow snags him for wade "f-ing" redden straight up. thats it. Dont get me wrong, heatley is a tremendous talent, but this trade demand stuff is a real question of character. Then, the price of the trade? whatever, we as fans can only sit here and wait.

Havlat, Gaborik... huge health issues in the past. The Rangers have NOTHING to compete with the atlantic divisions fowards. They lack any star power up front to compete with the rest of the divisions talent.

Islanders have Tavares(im pretty sure he will be good)

Pitt - Crosby, Malkin

Phi- Richards, Carter

NJD - Parise

the Rangers - Drury? Zherdev? if he plays? Callahan? AVERY?! none of these players would scare me if the other team got a Powerplay. Why? cause out of all of them, Drury is the only one with a decent history.

So i think the rangers need to make a move in order to compete within its own division, let alone the eastern conference.

Okay, it would be awesome to get dany heatley, but what is the price going to be?
They wanna open up some room for the young guys they say?
well who are we talking about? you trade gomez, so that opens a top line center position up. Enter Drury. Okay, So now who is going to be the second line Center... Dubinsky. I like Duby but he needs to make more things happen this year. He shows crazy amounts of potential to be a gomez replacement.

But here lays the big problem...

who are you going to trade for heatley?

Callahan - the only young guy who shows heart and desire. The only one that has scoring abilty.

Staal - YOUR BEST DEFENSEMEN?!

Dubinsky ? he would replace gomez easily...

and you wanna make room for youth to grow... but you gotta trade them for a talent like heatley...

My problem with DANY... hes asked to be traded from two teams now. The first time was becasue he killed his best friend. wanted to escape the demons and memories of that.... Okay ill let that slide.

then he wants to be traded again.... im sorry thats not how it works in this world. THEN he gives a list of teams he would be happy with going to?

It has to raise a few questions on when would he ask to be traded from the rangers?