I agree the Rangers need a top line center, but I don’t agree the Rangers needed Richards. What if hes never the same after his concusion last year? What a waste of money that would be.

Then he goes to the Rangers with an unlimited budget and he turns into the second worst GM in hockey, Garth Snow being the worst…Darryl Sutter was also worse before the Flames finally fired him.

It’s not as if the Rangers are a bad team, but if Sather had gone to New York and used the same skills that he used in Edmonton, rather than just trying to throw money at “stars” the Rangers would have won some Stanley Cups during his tenure.

it’s nine years for 58.5 million

the rangers were not the highest bidder. calgary was.

i’ll take an overrated player who scores 91 points like richards on my team any day of the week.

i’m not a brad richards fan but the blueshirts needed him

He wanted Richards soooo bad that he gave him a deal thats far worse then the Gomez, or Drury deals. Sure Richards is a better play then those two, but hes not THAT much better.

Couple things to point out:

1. Richards might never be the same after his concusion last year… and he might in fact be more prone to suffering another one.

2. Richards will have a $6.5 million cap hit when he is 35-40. Talk about a massive waste of cap space.

3. The Rangers are most certainly gonna have to let some of their young talent walk now. Dubinsky, Anisimov, Callahan, Boyle, Saure, Gillroy….. can’t keep them all now, which is a mistake. Richards might provide a boost for a couple years, but you can’t expect him to be a top player into his mid/late 30′s. However, the Rangers young talent is likely to keep growing over the next few years into the core of a team that could win cups… don’t expect Richards to drastically increase that possibility.

4. The Rangers history with such signings should have been a massive, and I mean massive, warning sign. No team (actually no GM) has continued to make such horrible “blockbuster” free agent signings that have turned into garbage. Everyone knows the obvious ones, but hell even Gaborik looked bad last year. You could make the agument he was hurt, but Sather KNEW Gaborik was injury prone when he threw a $7.5 mil a year deal at him. Its getting annoying seeing how often Sather just runs out and signs the most expensive player hoping for results.

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As a Rangers fan obviously I want this to work out… but its not going to. Richards never was a super star. He had a couple solid seasons, but he never put up massive numbers. Odds are he only has a couple years of peek performance left before his play starts falling off….. all the while the Rangers have to pay for declining numbers. On top of that, the Rangers young core they have been grooming over the last few years is certain to take a hit given the poor cap management by Sather.

Want to see a deal happen that will give the Rangers a real shot at winning the cup? Fire Sather…. becuase its not going to happen while hes still there.

Callahan had 23 goals and 48 points, while missing 20 games… so he likely would have had 60 points and nearly 30 goals. Hes going to want 5-6 million this time around. Dubinsky had 24 goals and 54 points in 77 games. Hes also going to get a raise, and probably want 5-6 million this year. Also, you have to remember that they are RFAs… meaning other teams can make them offers that the Rangers would have to match. Its not crazy to think someone could make a very high one or two year offer considering theres not a lot of good UFAs out there. If that happens the Rangers are really screwed.

Lets assume for a second that the Rangers gave both Cally and Dubinsky $5 mil each. That leaves the Rangers with just $6 mil in cap space. With that, they still need to sign a couple defensemen…. and what about Anisimov and Boyle? Both looked really good last year, and Anisimov has a future as a great goal scorer. Are the Rangers ready to let yet another young talent walk to sign an over the hill super star?

Spin it how you like, but there is no “done deal” when it comes to re-signing Cally and Dubinsky. Odds are one of them is going to be walking out of town.

You don’t need luck when things are a done deal.