Richard S. Scoops Larry Brooks

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly a “scoop” but loyal listener Richard S. did e-mail us earlier in the week pointing out the Rangers precarious cap situation moving forward.  As is our custom, Eric and I discussed the e-mail on yesterday’s episode.  Today, Larry Brooks wrote an article about this topic in The Post and specifically about how it effects Brandon Dubinsky.  Dubi is set to become a restricted free agent this summer.

Give the episode a listen and the article a read to get up to date with the situation, but simply put, it’s not good.  The Rangers have almost $40 million committed to eight players next year and have only ten players (Patrick Rissmiller being one of them) under contract.  That means that at a minimum the Rangers would have to sign 10 players, most likely for a total of around $15 million (there’s a good chance the salary cap goes down a bit next year).  When the list of players the Rangers need to re-sign includes Brandon Dubinsky, Nik Zherdev and Ryan Callahan–all of whom will be expecting and entitled to big raises–it becomes a very sticky situation.

What’s more, it makes Chris Drury’s $7 million, Wade Redden’s $6.5 million, Michael Rozsival’s $5 million and Markus Naslund’s $4 million cap hits the big, big elephants in the room…especially if they continue to underperform. 

At 9-2-1, you’d better hope this year’s Rangers team is the real deal, because unless the Rangers make a deal to shed salary, the future looks a little murky.