While speculation brews the New York Rangers might pursue a veteran defenseman by the February 26th trade deadline, the club over the weekend retained two of their better young blueliners.
On Saturday the Rangers re-signed Dan Girardi to a two-year, $3.1 million contract extension. The deal will pay Girardi $1.5 million for the 2008-09 season and $1.6 million for 2009-10. This season he’s making $550K so he’s more than doubled his money per season.
The Blueshirts followed that up on Sunday by re-signing Fedor Tyutin to a four-year, $11.4 million contract, which breaks down to $2.85 million per season against the team’s salary cap starting next season.
Girardi and Tyutin, along with rookie Marc Staal, represent the future of the Rangers blueline corps. Giardi in only his second NHL season has demonstrated promising offensive skills, while Tyutin is considered to have good all-round defensive skills.
If these two continue to develop as hoped these re-signings could be considered bargains. Currently they won’t take up too much of the Rangers cap space heading into this summer leaving them enough cap space to re-sign other key players or to go shopping in this summer’s unrestricted free agent market.
With veterans Paul Mara, Marek Malik and Michal Rozsival all eligible for UFA status this summer, and the certainty that one of them (Malik) won’t be back, it was a wise decision by Rangers management to lock up Girardi and Tyutin now.
Frankly I am torn on Roszival. On the one hand he is a consistently frustrating player. He has a tremendous shot yet always defers to Jagr (especially on the power play) but since Jagr will likely not be around next year Roszival may feel more free to shoot the puck, thus making him a better player. As for Mara and Malik, I get the feeling both of them are gone by the summer (if not before)
I'm Lyle Richardson, also known as Spector, Foxsports.com 's "Prince of Pucks".,which is based on the fact I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada and I couldn't think of a better byline. I've been an NHL hockey commentator since 1998 on my website, Spector's Hockey, and I'm a contributing writer for Foxsports.com , The Hockey News and Eishockey News. I'm also a regular on The Faceoff Hockey Show and a frequent guest on "The Late Crew" on The Team 1200 Ottawa.
