FanHouse Glen Sather

The New York Rangers continued their free agency spending on Thursday by signing 30-year-old forward Ales Kotalik to a three-year, $9 million deal. It's a move that could signal the end of restricted free agent Nikolai Zherdev's tenure in New York after one, uninspiring season.

As for Kotalik, he spent the 2008-09 season with Buffalo and Edmonton, while he's scored at least 20 goals in three of the past four seasons. He's also one of the best shootout specialists in the league. General manager Glen Sather, however, continues to sign checks with a stamp. Or so it seems.

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Atlantic Division.

It will be an interesting summer for the five teams in the Atlantic. Four teams made the playoffs, including the eventual Stanley Cup champion, and the one team that didn't make it -- the New York Islanders -- holds the first pick in Friday's draft, which isn't a bad consolation prize. All around it was a pretty successful season for these five teams.

Before the Rangers made a whole host of changes to their team in March -- the additions of Sean Avery, Derek Morris, Nik Antropov and a coaching switch -- they had a few problems; their high paid stars weren't producing, they played with no emotion many nights and they couldn't score at all, depending on Henrik Lundqvist to win games.

During last night's loss to the Capitals and in their other three losses during the series, the Rangers fell prey to these same faults. Blame coach John Tortorella's distractions and GM Glen Sather's letter all you want, but this was still the same that struggled mightily before the bandaids were applied.

After defeating the Rangers, 5-3, in Game 6 Sunday afternoon, the two teams will play a Game 7 in Washington on Tuesday night. When that game gets played, the New York Rangers want to make sure that there isn't a repeat of the incident that occurred on Friday night in Washington that resulted in a one-game suspension for John Tortorella.

Just minutes before the puck dropped Sunday on Game 6, Rangers GM Glen Sather issued a letter to Gary Bettman providing additional details about what happened on Friday night, supplemented with a number of accusations that the Capitals organization failed to provide enough security to protect Tortorella and the rest of the Rangers players from the fans sitting behind the visiting bench.

Full text of the letter follows after the jump.

Watching the hockey news wires Sunday, it was clear that some important news coming out of Florida was being squelched.

Yes, I suppose it was exciting that Sidney Crosby stepped up to defend teammate Evgeni Malkin. Then again, I think just as much attention, if not more, should be paid to the perfectly executed hip check that Keith Ballard delivered to send Malkin tumbling through the air in the first place. In hockey, the hip check has become a lost art. Bravo to Ballard for fearlessly delivering it clean, hard and without fear against one of the game's biggest names. But we shouldn't ignore the fact that the Panthers actually managed to win the game, 4-2.

After watching Ballard wipe out Malkin -- go and watch it again now, I'll wait -- I couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the Panthers. I'll freely admit that's a bit abnormal, as I live in the Washington suburbs and have gotten used to thinking of them as a surprisingly pesky division rival of the Capitals. But I'm feeling sympathy nonetheless, and part of it comes from the realization that this franchise -- one that endured a raft of layoffs in their business operations earlier this year -- needs to make the playoffs more than just about any other franchise in the NHL outside of Phoenix.

It's not very often that I find myself on common ground with Mike Milbury. The fiery, often controversial announcer and former Islanders GM has a tendency to be outspoken -- and other times simply misquoted. Today, he wrote a blog for CBC praising Glen Sather and the Rangers for turning things around since the deadline. And I can do nothing else but wholeheartedly agree.

The Rangers were a soap opera without any identifiable characters for past few months. Their hot start in October was nothing but a faint memory as they slipped down the standings and were frustratingly futile on offense. No one in the locker room really seemed concerned to do anything about it. Not that they didn't care -- I'm sure they did -- it's just that they needed someone to light a fire under them.

If you thought the deadline week saga of Bill Guerin and the Islanders was over, think again. Today, Larry Brooks of the New York Post added some after the fact rumors to the fray. According to Brooks, the Islanders offered the Rangers the same deal the Penguins got, but Glen Sather didn't take it.

Instead, the Rangers ended up getting Nik Antropov from Toronto to help cure their scoring woes. Antopov has delivered in his short time on Broadway, scoring four points in five games and is +4. It's hard to argue that Guerin would have been able to do more than that, but we'll take another look at the trades that did -- and didn't -- happen on deadline day.

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.

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In news that is sure to delight the rest of the Eastern Conference, the New York Rangers have claimed forward Sean Avery on re-entry waivers, as reported by TSN. There was some speculation leading up to the announcement that a number of teams might consider a claim before the Rangers, but the Avery-to-New York reunion was destined to happen.

The Dallas Stars reportedly placed Sean Avery on re-entry waivers Monday morning, giving the 29 other teams in the NHL an opportunity to pick him up for half price (Dallas will be responsible for half of Avery's contract). It's long been assumed that the New York Rangers will be Avery's eventual landing spot, allowing him to raise his particular brand of hell in the Atlantic Division once again.

It's worth pointing out that after Avery was given his ridiculous suspension for cracking a sex joke, John Tortorella, the current Rangers head coach, had some harsh words for the NHL's premier agitator.