So everyone screaming about how Marian Gaborik didn't show up for the playoffs and needs to be traded, etc., pay attention: rumors swirling that he will need surgery to repair a rotator cuff and miss training camp and likely the first couple of months of the season.

Details after the jump.

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Hello. You may remember me from such fanposts as....shit, I don't remember what they were called. Click my name and look them up. I've had a couple, though.

Anyway, I'm realizing that it's been over twenty years since the Rangers began what everyone thought would be a great run in the 1990s....and for the most part, they were one of the most successful teams in the league from 1990-1997, and easily it was the best period in Rangers history since the early-mid 1970s (you'd have to go back to the inception of the franchise, from 1927 until World War II to find a similar period of excellence. Yeah. I know. Not easy being a fan of this franchise)

I also realize that most of you whippersnappers were either not alive or crawling around in diapers, and therefore grew up dealing with the misery of 1998-2004, and the meh years from post lockout until now.

It amazes me to think that you guys look at the 1990s the way I look at the 1970s, so I figured I'd do a quick recap of how good things were, and how this is a hopeful replication of that period (albeit with more championships).

And maybe some day twenty years from now, one of you kids will tell similar stories to the next generation of whippersnappers while I'm eating my porridge in the home.

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Hi there. My name is Joe Reiter. You may remember me from such posts as "Sather's Greatest Hits" and "Lead Paint: Delicious...but deadly". Wait, that last one isn't mine. Disregard, please.

Quite a while ago, I'd mentioned that I had been noodling around with this idea of a history of the Rangers based on not making a couple of moves in the 1970s, which a couple of people thought was interesting.

And now that it's the all-star break, and since I've wasted way more time on this than I originally intended, I'm going to share this pathetic time waster stupid idea interesting project with you.

For those not in the know, I'm a writer (see, Reiter rhymes with writer), and whenever I get started on a project, I usually do what I like to call a warm-up exercise to get the brain juices flowing: I'll pick some random topic or idea and just run with it until I feel sufficiently ready to do proper work.

For example: "You've just met with Michael Wilson and Barbara Brocoli and been given free rein to write the next James Bond movie. Go."

(Now THAT'S a whole other story. I hit on this idea for a trilogy of Bond flicks a while ago, the details of which are available to pitch, of course. I'll be in LA for meetings in a couple of weeks, so feel free to call me, guys.)

Anyway, not that long ago I got this idea into my head that, if Fred Shero had correctly traded for Colin Campbell in 1980 to shore up the defense, maybe things would've gone differently in the playoffs that year.

Maybe Campbell's presence on the blue line changes the outcome of the second round series between Philly and the Rangers, maybe the Rangers win out instead of losing in five (doubtful), maybe they push Philly harder, making it a seven game series. Maybe the toll wears on them in their next series, and the North Stars prevail, and knock off the Islanders and prevent their dynasty from starting. Maybe a school of mermaids show up in the East River singing songs that lure street-clogging tourists to their deaths....

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the difference between a championship/contending team and a dog are, besides luck, a handful of decisions, sometimes made years before, that impact the roster and look of a franchise.

Thinking of that, I looked at that 1977 draft and, after cursing Ferguson for skipping Bossy, realized that Emile Francis would never have let a scoring talent like that slip through his fingers twice.

That led to me skipping back a few year into the early-mid 1970s, and looked at some of Emile Francis' moves...more precisely the ones that led to his dismissal and the hiring of Ferguson.

Then I started playing Monday morning quarterback, trying to figure out what the impact would be of not making a move that really happened, or making a move that didn't.

(For reasons of sanity, I didn't go all the way back to the 1940s, when a teenaged Gordie Howe attended training camp for the Rangers, but got homesick and disgusted when some veteran Rangers players mocked him for not knowing how to put on his equipment. A year later Gordie went to camp with Detroit and.....arrrrrgh. Around the same time, the Montreal Canadiens tried trading their ‘fragile' francophone Maurice Richard to the Rangers early in his career. A deal was worked out, but the Rangers backed out at the last minute. Richard went on to dominate through the 40s and 50s, fighting with Howe for the title of best player in the league. Imagine those two on the Rangers in the 40s and 50s. How many Stanley Cups in a row does that team win? Five? Ten? Twenty?)

It got a lot more involved than I really thought it would, but it seemed slightly interesting. I then decided fuck it, and started replaying some of these moves, albeit with the knowledge of what the consequences would be for some of the trades made.

Yes, I know it's grossly unfair, but this was just a mental exercise. Everything that follows the reverse decisions I make below is absolute best-case speculation. Just needed to throw that out there, for anyone who starts shrieking "NO NO NO NO NO NO THIS IS STUPID". Yes, it is stupid, I agree. It's psychotic. But I never claimed to be sane...

And just to qualify this: I'm not using any metrics to determine outcomes (that's George's turf). I don't have the time or money to spend on putting something together that would actually tally outcomes based on the moves below. This is solely based on what the records were, what they might have been had players been on a different team, and how that impacted the league as a whole (which will be notable during the 1981 playoffs, where the Kings, instead of being knocked off by the Rangers in round one, make the finals in my reality because the Rangers were seeded higher and didn't bully them into submission until....ah ah ah....spolers....)

Once more, the criteria: I did this only from 1969-1982. I could've kept going, and I may revisit at some point, but only if someone is paying me. Or I have a lot of free time. Or a mental breakdown.

So without further ado, here is....

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Ok, higher-ups, if I step on toes prematurely here, feel free to delete this.

So I usually, when stuck, give myself a writing exercise to untrack myself. Of late I've been getting the hell kicked out of me by a political satire/comedy that's just making me miserable, which is, in turn, making me not want to finish it, which is, in turn, annoying a production exec out in Hollywoodland...

Usually my excursions involve just writing whatever comes into my head: a proper pitch on how to do a Wonder Woman movie (Amazons are female Spartans, this isn't that hard, Warner Brothers), notes on a 1950s spy novel I've had tumbling in my head, a complete re-imaging of what the Rangers fortunes would have been with smarter personnel moves by Emile Francis from the early 70s onward....wait, what? That's a whole separate blog I may yet get to some day....

Anyway, Wyshynski's Puck Daddy special to pass the days in August until training camp is, like last year's Mount Puckmore (oh, the agita Jim wound up with) is called Guilty Pleasures, featuring guest bloggers answering nine questions about the sport they love.

Hoping to get my brain focused for the workload ahead, I spent twenty minutes writing this up. The formatting took longer than the answering.

Again, not sure if somebody is already doing one for Puck Daddy....I just needed to get the juices flowing tonight.

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As per NBC New York:

New York Ranger Sean Avery was arrested and charged with battery on a police office earlier Friday, according to a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman.

Police responded to noise complaints at Avery’s Hollywood home at about 1 a.m. and arrested him. It wasn’t known what prompted the alleged assault on the officer.

The battery charge is a misdemeanor. Avery’s bail was set at $20,000.

More details from TMZ:

NHL star Sean Avery was arrested early this morning after he shoved a police officer who was trying to break up a loud party at his home in the Hollywood Hills... TMZ has learned.

According to law enforcement sources, a neighbor called police to complain about the noise coming from Avery's home. When police arrived at about 1:00 AM, we're told Avery answered the door ... then shoved a cop and slammed the door behind him. 

Police then knocked again, and we're told Avery came to his senses and opened up. According to law enforcement ... Avery was extremely cooperative after that, but was still booked for battery on a peace officer.

He was taken to the Hollywood police station and is being held on $20,000 bail.

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Saw this tweet from agent Alan Walsh earlier:

NYR announce that ticket prices going up 23% next season. Good to know the lockout was all about making the game affordable for the fans.

Followed that up by doing a check, and sure enough....

Knicks season ticket prices will increase an average of 49 percent next season, MSG announced Friday. Rangers tickets will go up an average of 23 percent.

Yeah, that pretty much kills any chance of them getting my business. If I don't get tickets for free, I'm not going, thus likely ending my six year streak of attending home openers.

I'm wondering how they'll spin this if both the Knicks and Rangers miss the playoffs.

"Well, gee, sure we're not providing playoff teams....but we're making the concourses WIDER!!"

F this franchise and the saxophone Dolan rode in on.

.....and still not talking about Chris Drury.

Finally got to finishing the revisions to the script, and as I've had an executive with a studio checking in with me more frequently lately (since I'd originally told her it would be done before Christmas), first thing I had to do was send it over to her. 

Now, keep in mind this thing was written entirely on spec, with me fully aware I have a better chance of waking up tomorrow morning next to Christina Hendricks, Salma Hayek, Anne Hathaway, Halle Berry, Sofia Vergara, Lucy Pinder, Keeley Hazell and one of the NHL Guardians than this getting done.....but stranger things have happened. Hell, Major League was written as a fantasy of seeing the Indians win a division title in the early 80s before it picked up steam and got made. 

Anyway, if you know how to read a screenplay format and want to check it out, this link will take you to the page where you can download the PDF.  Self explanatory which one it is.....I hope. Any feedback would be great, especially the "hey this sucked thanks for wasting my time" kind (looking at you, Dig). 

Putting the logline/synopsis after the jump for all who need a reminder before diving into the script. FYI it's 100 pages long. 

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So roughly fifty years ago (okay, four months, it just feels that way), I put up a fan post detailing a hockey screenplay I was in the process of finishing a second draft of, and soliciting anybody interested in reading it. 

Once it was finished, I let it sit for a month just to give myself some distance from it so I could do a proper re-write. 

Then I went to the Austin Film Festival in October as a winner and guest, and my whole world was turned upside down (in a positive way) by meeting some film people who expressed interest in the pitch. 

That led to me having a month long panic attack that the script sucked, and I went through a crippling writer's block that left the rewrite sitting and waiting.

Fast forward to early December, and a couple of production company execs, having read another script of mine that was a winner at Austin, wanted to read THE CAPTAIN. 

Cue more panic attacks.

Then my grandmother died two weeks before Christmas, and I went on a week long drinking bender. And when I was done, I decided it was time to buckle down and finished the motherfucking script once and for all. And with a little inspiration from Michael Arndt (the credited screenwriter of Toy Story 3), I finally found the proper hook to fix the script. I'm now thirty pages away from finishing (five days of work if it's flowing smoothly, and it has been so far). 

In the meanwhile, I've cleaned up the logline (the one or two sentence description of the script) and the synopsis. Because the movie is set in the NHL and more specifically involving the Rangers, I figured I'd share 'em. And once the script is done I'll have a watermarked version to read for anyone interested.

After the jump, the stuff you've waited (or forgotten about completely) four months for. All thoughts are welcome, especially any haiku from frankiec.

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Your Jagr-Mount Puckmore was named one of the favorite hockey stories of 2010 on Puck Daddy....though I get the feeling it was a very tongue-in-cheek thing.....

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Puck-Daddy-s-20-Favorite-Hockey-Stories-of-2010;_ylt=Ai02daF9SMUO.hepn4GigT97vLYF?urn=nhl-301115

Yeah, I thought we all beat this horse to death, too....but like Leeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkins, epic beard man, and 'charlie bit my finger', What, no Jagr? is now a meme all its own.

So tweets Larry Brooks, Andrew Gross, etc.

From Andrew Gross:

However, enforcer Derek Boogaard’s eventual return is also on hold. Boogaard has missed five games with what started as a strained right shoulder. However, coach John Tortorella said today Boogaard has been experiencing headaches so the Rangers have shut him down from exercising and will most likely (make that almost certainly) have him tested for a concussion. It goes without saying that until the headaches cease, he will not be allowed to practice/skate/workout.

Link to his updated blog here.

Larry Brooks' tweet:

NYP_Brooksie Larry Brooks

 

Boogaard experiencing headaches, may have concussion in aftermath of Dec. 9 fight in Ottawa v. Carkner.

This isn't so much a hockey post as it is a post aimed more at ownership.

Every spring since the dawn of time the circus comes to Madison Square Garden, and back in the old days that used to mean 'home' playoff games in Toronto because the circus apparently brought in more money (in the days before spiking ticket sales meant greater revenue).

All that changed when Emile Francis was offered the chance to take over the team, and did so only with the assurance that the team would be able to play home playoff games at MSG. Luckily for us, ownership agreed....otherwise who knows what might've happened and where the franchise would be now (metaphorically, not geographically).

Anyways....

As an self-avowed animal lover, I've never been a big fan of the circus. I don't like the stories that have historically been attached to circuses involving abuse of the animals, and as a kid I always hated those field trips to see the circus, the flashing lights be damned.

But now, there have been pictures posted showing how baby elephants are 'trained' to do all those tricks, and it involved what essentially boils down to torture.

This link details, with photos, some of the tortures being heaped on the elephants. I can't imagine the bears or tigers fare much better.

So what's the point here, you may be asking?

Ideally, I'd like to see the Dolans shut out Ringling Brothers from performing at the Garden, now and forever, but that would involve some serious moxie, and I'm reasonably certain they'll never do that because as long as there's money coming in they'll look the other way.

I don't know, this just really pisses me off. I really wish there was an ownership in place that had guts and integrity....but I guess I'm just too much of an idealist. A good owner would've fired Sather years ago, never mind allowing animal torture to go on in the name of profits.

As long as li'l Jimmy can keep strumming his instrument out on the island with his bought & paid for band, nothing will ever change at the Garden, and that just really depresses me.....on both a hockey and personal level.

From a variety of Twitter feeds (Rangers official, Larry Brooks):

Sorry for the caps, this just came over twitter via Bob McKenzie:

Marc Staal has agreed to terms with NYR. Five years, $3.975M per year. Done deal.

Everybody can breathe easy now.

3.975 is less than I thought he'd get, was expecting to hear it was 4 and change per year for the next five or six. Either way, it's a great signing and is the final nail in the coffin of the Rangers career of Wade Redden. I mean, it just has to be.....right?

Note by Jim Schmiedeberg, Just wanted to let the Rangers know, we're about to delve into more "irresponsible fan behavior"......take it away joereiter:

Yeah, we all know the deal. Terrible with free agents, worse with his own RFAs, completely invisible to the fan base and media, a cigar smokin' tool sitting in Banff and running the team remotely like it's his fantasy hockey entry.

But in the course of looking up the "you've got to be a lion" quote in the aftermath of the Lindros trade waaaaay back when (which led to my calling him Simba in a bunch of emails after someone I knew got me his personal email address, they started getting bounced back shortly thereafter), I found some quotes, mostly pre-lockout, that are just a window into what a complete FAIL the Sather Error has been.

The best of the bunch after the jump.

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Here's the link to the article on sportsnet.ca, it was posted a little while ago, no details provided yet so it's all still speculation....but this is the first time there's been something to report other than "both sides far apart, no talks planned".

Kudos to Sather if he gets it done by week's end, maybe he did learn a lesson from the Dubinsky debacle.

Figure Staal gets 4-4.5 mil, and figure Redden will be house-hunting in Newington, CT by the end of the month.

I’m not much of a regular poster here, jumping in only on rare occasions to throw in my two cents (Jagr on Mount Puckmore? WTF?? Oh sorry....wrong topic). However, I’m in kind of a unique position at the moment, and this is the one place where I think/hope I might be able to get a little help.

Here's some background info: I've been a Ranger fan since I was four years old and saw my first game in 1979; game three of the '79 finals, which I watched in the basement of a drug dealer friend of my father's (don't ask). I remember being excited as a five year old during the Miracle on Ice a little less than a year later, mostly because my parents were going crazy, but the passion stuck. Aside from the glory that was 1994, I suffered through the Islander dynasty, the misery of the smurfs, Dave Brown, Patrick Roo-ahh and his goalposts, Trader Phil, Michel Bergeron, John motherf**king Druce, Leetch's ankle(s), Messier's Vancouver departure, every year from 1998-2004, the Leetch trade, Glen Sather's reign of error, and on and on and on....

I'm also a writer by trade (screenplays and script doctoring for the most part, though I did try out for this blog a couple of years ago before other work forced me to pull out of the running), and a few years ago, before Miracle came out, I went on a drunken rant complaining about the lack of decent hockey movies made by Hollywood. I was tired of counting off Slap Shot, then burying my head in my hands because next on the list was a toss-up between Youngblood and the Mighty Ducks. And I'm counting US-made movies, so the Rocket is out. Right now, to me, it's Slap Shot, Miracle, and then a drop off to anything considered a good movie (The Cutting Edge doesn't count as a hockey movie). 

I'll continue my story after the jump....for those who want to keep reading...

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I'm making the percentage up off the top of my head, of course, but when the guy behind the '94 baseball strike is named executive director of the NHLPA, it's not really that far off.....is it?

Of course nobody's confirmed it, but considering he's been acting as an 'advisor', it's not much of a stretch.

It just figures that right when Drury & Roszival's odious salaries come off the books there won't be any more hockey to play.

If you haven't seen it yet, this was posted by Puck Daddy an hour ago, here's the link to THN's breakdowns.

Basically it's a "no way Gaborik stays healthy so they're going to be screwed and even more so without Lundqvist" kind of reasoning.

They also rank Calgary 8th in the west. Basically, they threw darts at a board to come up with these picks, although I don't think the Rangers will make the playoffs if only because teams behind them improved more over the off-season...and they needed a massive late season surge just to almost-make-it.

The verbatim quote:

Why: Missing the playoffs on the last day of the regular season must still be stinging the Rangers and it won’t help we’ve slotted them in at unlucky No. 13 for 2010-11. Goalie Henrik Lundqvist is about the only reason the Rangers are still afloat and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes Marian Gaborik will make it through another season untouched by injury