The New York Rangers have struggled offensively all season. That fact has been driven home of late, as the Rangers have scored more than two goals in only two of their last nine games. Today, they got some help on that front as GM Glen Sather made a serious deadline push to get his team into the playoffs. The Rangers have acquired Nik Antropov from the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for second round and conditional picks, both from this year's draft. In a separate trade, they also acquired Derek Morris from the Phoenix Coyotes for Dmitri Kalinin, Nigel Dawes and Petr Prucha.
More Coverage: NHL Trade Deadline Tracker
In both of these deals, the Rangers gave up quite a bit -- three NHL-caliber players and two draft picks this summer overall. Sather is clearly making a major push for this season, where the Rangers currently reside in seventh place in the Eastern Conference, tied with Pittsburgh and only one point ahead of ninth place Carolina. Now, they're almost an instant lock for the post-season, assuming they can put it all together.Antropov adds an instant scoring presence to a team that desperately needs one. In 63 games with Toronto this year, he went 21-25-46. As for Morris, he had requested a trade from the Coyotes and has now got his wish. Morris had 12 points in 57 games for the Coyotes. Both players should also be a big help to the Rangers' power play unit.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-04-2009 @ 3:37PM
terick4576 said...
Ha! Seriously? It's news that Sather gives up quite a lot? The list is to long to mention but I'm sure he's happy to give Avery a 2nd chance while giving the fans another disheartening trade. Does Dolan even pay attention anymore? This is just another sad chapter in the life of Ranger fans...I'm just sayin
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3-04-2009 @ 4:43PM
phylbobb said...
Three quality players for Derek who??? Maybe Sather should consider being a G.M. for Major League Baseball
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3-04-2009 @ 7:10PM
No I In Jesse said...
Just because you've never heard of Derek Morris doesn't mean he's a nobody. And "three quality players" is an oversimplification of the situation.
Dawes has a great scoring touch, but he doesn't do much of anything defensively, gets overpowered by larger players in scoring areas (though not for lack of effort), and is prone to becoming completely invisible for long stretches of time. Prucha has an outstanding nose of the net and busts his ass on every inch of the ice, but he's also limited by his size. Kalinin's actually been one of the Rangers better defensemen lately, and would have probably benefited a lot from Tortorella's system, but he's still not as good as Morris.
Factor in that both Prucha and Dawes are going to be RFAs demanding raises next year, while Kalinin and Morris are both going to be UFAs. Suddenly, the Rangers have opened up or at least evened out cap space for next season while improving the starting roster for this year in 3 places (Averys over Dawes, Antropov over Prucha, Morris over Kalinin). These really aren't bad moves. And I'm normally a huuuge critic of Slats.
3-05-2009 @ 6:06AM
capsule33 said...
These moves make sense. Prucha is soft and hardly gets in the lineup. Dawes is too small...Kalinin is a good player, but they got no offense from him. As far as the pickups, they are both unrestricted free-agents at seasons end so the Rangers really made the move to shed some salary since Kalinin was making big money. Either way, the Rangers were not (are not) going to win the Cup.
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