FanHouse Petr Prucha

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 Pacific Division.

San Jose saw its Presidents' Trophy campaign come to a surprising end in the first round of the NHL playoffs, Los Angeles is still the perfect spot for Dany Heatley, and is there any hope for success on the ice in Phoenix?

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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The Penguins lost again on Monday night -- fifth in a row -- and continued their struggles with the power play. Entering play against the Rangers, the Penguins had been mired in an 0-for-24 slump with the man advantage. After an 0-for-8 showing at the Garden, you can extend that slump to 0-for-32. Not exactly an advantage.

Granted, the absence of Sergei Gonchar has been huge for the Penguins, which is no doubt leading to some (all?) of these struggles. Still, it's difficult comprehend how a unit that consists of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Petr Sykora can struggle to put the puck in the net on a semi-regular basis.

In the first period of Monday's game, the Penguins were awarded a four-minute power play after a high-sticking call on Petr Prucha, which was quickly followed by a questionable holding call on Dmitri Kalinin. It was going to be a full two-minute, two-man advantage. And they failed to score. Sure, Henrik Lundqvist was stellar in net, but he wasn't in goal for the 24 previous attempts.

So, what's the problem? Being too predictable comes to mind.

Let's take a look at a typical Penguins two-minute power play over the past month.

Thanks to a pair of goals from Matt Ellis, the Buffalo Sabres ended Boston's 10-game winning streak with a 4-2 victory at TD Banknorth Garden on Saturday afternoon. The loss not only snaps Boston's 10-game winning streak, it also ended a 14-game home winning streak, while also giving the Bruins their sixth regulation loss of the season.

Ellis opened the scoring for the Sabres just three minutes into regulation, while Thomas Vanek added his 26th goal of the season just two minutes later.

After Phil Kessel cut the deficit in half with his 24th goal of the season, Ellis added his second goal of the game early in the second period to score what proved to be the game-winner. Paul Gaustad added his fourth goal of the year for the Sabres, while Ryan Miller turned aside 29 shots in net.

The win for Buffalo, combined with Pittsburgh's loss to Florida, moved the Sabres into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Okay, so maybe the title is a bit of an overreaction. Still, that doesn't change the fact the New York Islanders are a terrible, terrible third period hockey team, and they proved it once again on Tuesday, giving up four goals in the final 20 minutes on their way to a 5-4 loss to the Rangers.

The Islanders actually entered the third with a 2-1 lead, only to watch the Rangers beat Joey MacDonald -- starting in place of Rick Dipietro -- four times on their final 12 shots. Petr Prucha, playing for the first time in eight games, tied the game just 49 seconds into the third period, while Michal Rozsival gave the Rangers their first lead of the night two minutes later. Markus Naslund and Nigel Dawes also tallied late goals for the Rangers, while Scott Gomez tapped in a tic-tac-toe pass from Nikolai Zherdev and Brandon Dubinsky in the second period, opening the scoring for the Rangers.

Mike Sillinger, Kyle Okposo, Blake Comeau and Mike Comrie scored for the Islanders.

Physical game between the crosstown rivals, resulting in a pair of fights in the first 10 minutes, and capped off with a crushing hit by Ryan Callahan on Trent Hunter early in the third. Callahan smashed the Islanders forward into the penalty box door, forcing it open, resulting in Hunter's midsection smashing off the boards. He was down for quite a while, and appeared to be in severe pain, resulting in a stretcher being brought on the ice. Hunter, however, managed to bring himself to his feet and skate off because, you know, he's a hockey player.

Free agent forward Mats Sundin has been taking his sweet time in deciding where to play this season, and it appears our long wait is about to end, as the 38-year old forward is going to announce his decision on Thursday. The two teams in the running? Vancouver and the New York Rangers.

CBC quotes Canucks general manager Mike Gillis as saying, "He is going to make a decision Thursday about the final destination."

The CBC report makes mention that Gillis met with Sundin's agent, J.P. Barry, on Tuesday and the two-year, $20 million dollar offer from this offseason is, apparently, still on the table if Sundin wants it (and who wouldn't!).

The one thing the Canucks have going for them in this race is the fact they already have the salary cap room needed to take on Sundin's salary. The Rangers, however, do not -- as of right now. Though, might I offer a suggestion to clear at least some of it? Send Petr Prucha to Pittsburgh for a bag of pucks. He needs a change of scenery in the worst way possible, and the Penguins are seriously lacking young wingers with any sort of scoring ability. Hey, just trying to help.

For the first time in ten games, Petr Prucha was an active member of the New York Rangers. After being a healthy scratch in every game since early November, the Rangers decided to activate Prucha for their game against Pittsburgh, and the 26-year old forward not only skated, but scored a game-tying goal late in the third period of New York's 3-2 shootout win.

Early on, I was thinking that -- and this is all just speculation on my part, it's probably 110% opposite of the reality -- maybe the Rangers decided to dress Prucha for this game to possibly showcase him to the Penguins, who are in need of young wingers. Prucha is in desperate need of a change of scenery, and as the folks over at Penguins blog, The Confluence, pointed out this week, wingers for Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have been a revolving door of, well -- it's been a revolving door. Let's just leave it at that. Not that Prucha, an enigma if there ever was one, would instantly solve that, but, hey, I'm just speculating here.

Anyway, Prucha jammed home a rebound off the boards behind the net with five minutes to play in the third period, while the Rangers smoked Penguins goalie Dany Sabourin on all three shootout attempts to pick up the extra point.

The first min-controversy of the New York Rangers season was settled early today in Prgaue, where it appears that head coach Tom Renney has reversed a decision and will dress Czech native Petr Prucha for the team's season opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning later today.

Newsday's Steve Zipay set off some online furor yesterday when he reported in his Blue Notes blog that Prucha had stormed off the ice and blown off a television interview after saying that he wouldn't be playing today. It was a reaction that was easy to understand, especially as Prucha had expected around 20 relatives to attend the game in Prgaue to see him play.

But as of a couple of hours ago, all has been forgotten, and Renney talked to Zipay to perform some damage control:

"I didn't change my mind, I made up my mind," said Renney. "I think Petr's had a good camp, he's been a little bit snakebitten offensively, but he's had chances as much as anybody on our team, and we need to score to win. The fact that he would be energized is not going to hurt us at all. But that's not unusual for Petr, we could be playing in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and he would play the game the same way. It was just one of those things, I contemplated it all day yesterday and last night."

Problem solved, right? Well, maybe not.