Finally after a day of waiting, Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust are Rangers, while the team bids goodbuy to Ales Kotalik and Christopher Higgins.

No matter how Jokinen meshes with Marian Gaborik, this is simply a good trade for the Rangers. They gave up nothing, while getting the cap flexibility for next season if their new No. 1 center leaves as a free agent.

These are the trades general manager Glen Sather needs to make. The Rangers can’t give up their young talent, as that’s the future of the organization, so he has to be nimble and use the bad fits in moves to make the team better.

In this trade, Sather just moved two very disappointing parts, including one that didn’t want to be in New York, and got himself a rental, which could make a huge impact this season. Coach John Tortorella knows Jokinen from his years in Tampa, as the new Ranger was the No. 1 option on the rival Florida Panthers. If anyone knows the enigmatic ex-Islander, it’s Torts. And if there’s a fit with Gaborik, the No. 1 line with Vinny Prospal on the wing, gives the Blueshirts a great scoring combination.

And if there isn’t a fit, then the No. 2 line may get a whole lot better, because there will be some secondary scoring going on, something that has been missing for most of the season.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the Rangers are a perfect team, far from it. It still needs to shed some really bad contracts in Wade Redden, Michal Rozsival and Donald Brashear, but it’s a start, and one that could be a sign of things to come.

Although this looks like a win-win, of course this could go south. No one thought getting Higgins and Kotalik were bad moves over the summer. In fact, this space lauded the arrival of the Smithtown, NY native, but it was not meant to be.

It’s not easy playing in your hometown, which is something Higgins learned very quickly in New York and Kotalik just never fit in with Tortorella, something not many can do. Yet, neither player were life long Rangers, just some spare parts in a greater scheme of things.

Yet, the young players are a different story. Sather must keep his young talent, since that’s the way the organization grows long term. Brandon Dubinsky still needs to grow and Ryan Callahan can improve as well. On the blue line, three young talents in Marc Staal, Michael Del Zotto, and Matt Gilroy are the future. Sure they make their mistakes, but their errors are far less glaring then Redden’s or Rozsival’s.

Maybe in the next month, Sather will be able to move another player or two. It will take a miracle to get rid of Redden’s bloated contract and Brashear appears to found his life in the Blue Seats with the addition of Prust, but sometimes things happen. Who would have thought Scoot Gomez would have been traded after last season or Jokinen and Prust come to New York for a couple of spare parts.

Things happen. And now the Rangers are better for it.

Reportedly, the Blueshirts will send disgruntled forward Ales Kotalik and disappointing left wing Christopher Higgins west for center Olli Jokinen and enforcer Brandon Prust. It’s a win-win for the Rangers, since they would free up salary on the cap while addressing two very pressing needs.

Yet, they are reportedly waiting for Kotalik’s approval, since he has a limited no-trade clause in his contract. One of those teams is the Flames.

If the details can be worked out, general manager Glen Sather would have found his No. 1 pivot to go with Marian Gaborik and a tough guy, a role both Donald Brashear and Aaron Voros failed at this season for different reasons. (Brashear doesn’t fight, while Voros doesn’t win his fights.)

In Jokinen, the Rangers get a 31 year-old veteran who has scored more than 30 goals four times in his career and current has 11 lights of the lamp with 24 assists. He will immediately become the No. 1 center on the team between Vinny Prospal and Marian Gaborik, forming a very good scoring combination.

Prust will become the Rangers fighter, a role they sorely missed this season after Colton Orr left as a free agent and his replacement Brashear turned out to be a bust.

In turn, the Sather will ship away Kotalik, who has been a healthy scratch for the past eight games and reportedly was looking to be traded. On the season, he has eight goals with 14 assists and an awful minus-18. The former Buffalo Sabre was supposed to the answer on the power play point when he signed a three-year, $9 million contract over the summer, but he couldn’t handle that role and his defense has been extremely suspect.

Also going to Calgary will be Higgins, who came to the Rangers in the Scott Gomez trade. A former 20 goal scorer, the Smithtown, NY native just couldn’t find the net this season and only has six goals with eight assists and a minus-9.

If this trade goes through the Rangers would assume Jokinen’s $5.25 million contract for the rest of the season, yet is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season and Prust makes $500,000. Sather will free up Kotalik’s $3 million per for the next two seasons with this trade.

Higgins will be an unrestricted free agent after this season.

Nothing will be announced until later today at the earliest. In the meantime, Ranger fans can take solace in Gaborik’s natural hat trick in the team’s 3-1 win over the Avalanche.

Cam Ward

Eric Staal

Henrik Lundqvist

Ryan Callahan

Contact Bob Trainor at trainorcomm@gmail.com for more information.

Last night’s game against the Islanders was a call to arms for the Rangers. Are they are a team or are they just a collection of overpaid veterans just looking to collect their check?

After benching Wade Redden and Ales Kotalik, the Rangers responded and thanks to an ill advised Islander starting of a very tired Dwayne Roloson, who gave up three goals on the Rangers first five shots in their eventual 5-2 win.

“I think, collectively, as a team, we responded well and everybody realized what they had to do,” right wing Ryan Callahan, who scored two goals in the match, said. “I think it’s a little bit of both. Obviously, Hank is the backbone of this team and he made some key saves.”

Lundqvist made sure the Rangers had a chance as he stopped the Islander onslaught during the first 10 minutes of the game when the Isles outshot the Rangers 10-1. Being up for the challenge, Lundqvist kept the Rangers in the match as his teammates got their legs.

“It’s happened a lot of times in this building,” Lundqvist said. “They come out flying and we have a tough time settling in. It was important for me personally and for the team to stay in there. I don’t know how we had the lead after the first period, but we did.”

But a win is a win and the Rangers will now move forward with maybe with a new found lease on life. There’s no word on Redden and Kotalik, both of who sat in the press box for the match. After a shouting match between the defenseman and coach John Tortorella, Redden was worked out by assistant coach Mike Sullivan and then expressed his displeasure to the media.

“Not real pleased about it, honestly,” Redden said.  “To be singled out – I know the team’s going through struggles and everyone’s got to be better.  The fact that I’m sitting out – I mean, I’m not real happy about it.”

Redden acted like he was losing money here, but let’s remember his $39 million contract will still be paid even if he’s sitting on the bench. And for him to be “singled out” is a joke, because he’s been playing this way for a year and a half.

Yet, you have to blame Sather for that signing, yet he will still get paid as well. Even though some morning show commentators were saying he was set to get canned, the Rangers president’s job is safe for now.

And you can look for Tortorella to go as well, but at least the coach has abandoned his old offense first mantra and started to do some neutral zone trapping over the past two weeks.

So, all is well for one night at least as the Rangers try to save the season. But is this just one night or a start of something big?

We will soon find out.

R-A-N-G-E-R-S.

Thus, before the Winter Olympics interrupt yet another NHL regular season and separate any number of teammates for a solid two weeks, this logo remains the one constant for both the Slovakian forward and the Swedish goalie.

When Gaborik inked a five-year deal during the off-season, for a reported $37.5 million, New York appeared to have as much strength on its first line of offense as the last line of defense.  While skating for the Minnesota Wild in 2007, the 27 year-old forward blitzed the Rangers for a five-goal, six point game, en route to a career-high 42 goal, 83 point season.  Some observers may point to good karma, as the last blueshirt to amass as many goals or points was Jaromir Jagr, a fellow countryman,

Still, a more likely reason that Glen Sather, the team’s general manager since 2000, opened the vault was that, aside from Jagr, none of the players on his watch had scored 42 goals; in fact, Mark Messier, with 47 during the 1995-96 season, was the last Ranger to reach this plateau.

With 23 goals and 42 points, Gaborik is off to a splendid start on Broadway.  However, he is counted upon far too often, and one could only wonder where the Rangers would be without him.

Through 33 games, which have produced a 14-16-3 record, New York has tallied a mere 89 goals.  The quick math suggests that Gaborik has been involved in almost half of its scoring plays; the more frightening math is that the 6’1”, 199 wing has notched one goal for every 3.8 Ranger goals.  The disparity is so great that Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos [who has scored 18 of the Lightning’s 80 goals] is a distant second with a 1-in-4.44 ratio.

To further illustrate Gaborik’s importance, not even Wayne Gretzky’s 92-goal season in 1981-82 could compare.  The Edmonton Oilers, then coached by Sather, knocked in a whopping 417 goals, and Gretzky potted one goal for every 4.53 goals scored by his mates.

To think where New York -already in 11^th place to begin with [though just two points out of a playoff spot]- would be without Gaborik, a five-time 30-goal scorer, is unfathomable.

And, to think that Gaborik, who had hip surgery in January 2009, can never be injured again is equally insane.  Just 12 games into his Ranger career, Gaborik missed two games with a knee injury following a collision with the Coyotes’ Petr Prucha.

At the other end of the ice, there is Lundqvist, who was rewarded with a six-year, $41.25 million extension in February 2008.  Except that, unlike Gaborik, he doesn’t have the numbers to show for his efforts; Wednesday night’s 2-1 loss to the Islanders was his league-leading 13^th loss.  And, though Lundqvist finished the contest with a respectable .916 save percentage and 2.57 goals-against average, both of those numbers appear quite pedestrian when stacked against the league leaders.

Though he has yielded four goals or better on just five occasions, the opposition has had nine three-goal games against him.  The Rangers average fewer than three per game.

Losing with such frequency is new to the 27 year-old, who had amassed 142 victories over his first four seasons.  Along the way, he established a franchise record with 30 victories as a rookie in 2005-06, was nominated for the Vezina Trophy in his first three seasons, and remains the only goalie in NHL history to begin a career with four consecutive 30-win seasons.  Additionally, his stellar play in net during the 2006 Olympiad in Torino, Italy catapulted Sweden to just its second gold medal ever.

Now, all of those accolades are buried in a rollercoaster season.

“I want to make sure I do everything to help the team turn this around,” he replied after stopping 26 of 28 shots.  “As athletes, we play to win, and we are just not winning.”

Following an opening night loss to the defending champion Pittsburgh Penguins, Lundqvist reeled off a six-game winning streak.  Since that point, however, he has only won five of 20 games.

It was just never like this before.

From his NHL debut, on October 8, 2005, it was evident that Lundqvist was in this league to stay.  Less than a week into his rookie season, he won his first game.  Within two weeks, Lundqvist notched the first whitewash by a Ranger freshman since John Vanbiesbrouck more than two decades earlier.

His first 30-win season eclipsed the franchise’s previous rookie high of 29, shared by Jim Henry [1941-42] and Johnny Bower [1953-54]; along the way, Lundqvist was New York’s first rookie netminder to post 20 wins since Mike Richter in 1990-91.

“The King” was born, and Ranger fans had someone to believe in.

And on and on it went.

Until now.

More than ever, the Rangers rely on Lundqvist to have a fighting chance.  Steven Valiquette, the perennial back-up was demoted to Hartford, and Chad Johnson was recalled.  But, whether or not Lundqvist’s workload is affected remains to be seen.  The next NHL game Johnson plays will be his first.

So it stands to reason that Edmonton returned the favor by hiring former Ranger coach Tom Renney last summer as associate coach under Pat Quinn.

“I knew I was being considered head coach for the team,” said Renney who came back to the New York area for the first time since leaving the Rangers, as his Oilers were down by the Islanders 3-1 at Nassau Coliseum. “The strategy wasn’t what I was looking for. That said, when [Oilers GM] Steve [Tambellini] presented me the idea, given the people who were involved, it was a pretty easy decision to make, recognizing that there may have been head coaching opportunities and those were looming, I just looked at the people involved and thought this was the right opportunity.”

To Renney, an intellectual man, this was the smart move. Although he said he has other head coaching opportunities available to him, the coach is able to be involved with an organization by slowly making it part of his culture. Add to the fact that he is very close friends with Quinn, and it’s a move that makes total sense for the egoless Renney.

As is his personality, he also holds no ill will to the Ranger organization and said he still keeps tabs on his old club. “They are part of my family and certainly, I take interest in how they are doing,” he said. “I am not consumed by it, because I have my own organization I have to help win, but I certainly keep an eye on them and how they are doing.”

Believe it or not, it’s easier for Renney to do it this way and come to the New York area visiting the Islanders, while staying away from Madison Square Garden, as the Rangers visit the Oilers on Thursday. He is still emotionally connected with the club and needs time to make Edmonton his home.

“I have to say so, because I so much enjoyed it there,” he said.  “I think I have to be immersed and embraced by my own team before I go into Madison Square Garden and kick their [butts]. I am not there yet. I have no problem trying to beat them at home in Edmonton. I have to say the fans were very supportive of me and what I was trying to do there. It would be fun to go back there at some point of time and win a game at MSG for somebody else, but right now I am still emotionally connected to that situation.”

It’s his love for the Rangers that made last Feb. 23rd so difficult. Even though he finished his Ranger tenure with a record of 164-117-46, leaving him fourth on the all-time coach’s win list for the club and since the lockout all his teams made the playoffs, something the Rangers didn’t sniff for seven seasons prior to his arrival.

And even though his replacement John Tortorella finished what Renney started last season, he did so with the additions of Nik Antropov, Sean Avery and Derek Morris. And Tortorella only could bring the Rangers to the first round, embarrassing the organization in Game 5 by throwing a water bottle at the fans sitting behind the glass at the Verizon Center in Washington.

Although those changes happened, you have to wonder if Renney could have done better.

“It’s inevitable that you think that way and change is something that’s supposed to happen to get back to where you want to be,” he said. “It started with me and that was the best place to start. Certainly I felt confident in my ability to coach and felt that they didn’t have to do that.

“But that said, subsequent changes suggest that there was more involved with the team than coaching, even beyond the conclusion of the season with free agency. I am over that and I think the body of work will be looked at as being successful, given what happened the number of years prior to that.”

It’s that class which makes Renney remembered by the fans and the media. He said that Sather told him the day he fired him he “dreaded this day, since the day he gave [Renney] the job.”  And the New York Chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association awarded the erstwhile coach with the Good Guy Award last season.

Even with all of those accolades, Renney’s biggest attribute was coaching the uncoachable. He had a great relationship with notorious coach killer Jaromir Jagr and was one of few who could control Sean Avery.

“That’s certainly what you want is that [the players] like playing for you,” he said. “Now that’s not always going to be the case, but if they appreciate playing for you and like playing for you that’s what you want more than anything else.

“Part of that is that they are winning and you get a sense that you will takes through your help. I enjoyed every single guy. There’s not one guy in that organization I had a hard time with and I enjoyed every single guy.  As much as I hoped they helped them, they certainly helped me in my career.”

And if he has a regret, it has to be the Buffalo series back in the 2007 playoffs.

“That one was a bummer,” he said. “I think of that one, I think, ‘Aw gosh, we had that right on our fingertips and we let it slip away.’ It was a youthful team, but you have to quit losing before you start winning, and as much as we’d been able to do good things in the regular season, and to that point in time in the playoffs, we still weren’t quite ready for the responsibility of being complete in postseason play. And we paid the price.”

A price which eventually cost him his job two years later. Yet, Renney has moved on and has another goal now, and that’s to get the Oilers to the Stanley Cup. And guess what, he has an opponent in mind too — how about the Rangers?

“I would ok with that one,“ he smiled. “It would be fun to have home ice advantage and winning the Stanley Cup in front of the home crowd.”

Spoken like a true Edmonton Oilers coach.

It was supposed to be Jaromir Jagr, but he was never the same after his shoulder was dislocated in the 2006 playoffs. And Scott Gomez never clicked with anyone he played with on his line.

Chris Drury was supposed to be clutch, but the drain of being a sniper was never his forte.

The Rangers needed a scorer. Everyone knew it. And it took a couple of years for general manager Glen Sather to find one.

And now Marian Gaborik is paying instant dividends.

Take last night’s 4-3 win in Washington. After Washington tied the game on a very bad let-in by Henrik Lundqvist and then went ahead on a power play goal, the Blueshirts looked sunk.

But enter Gaborik, the play-maker, who scored two to give the Rangers two – points, that is.

“That’s what makes players like him so special,” Drury said, as reported by Newsday. “They can change the game on one shot and they can win a game on two plays and two shots.”

Those two shots came almost immediately. Just 18 seconds after the Capitals went up on Niklas Backstom’s tally, Gaborik came in with slap shot past Jose Theodore. And then beat the Washington netminder 2:33 later with the gamewinner.

“That’s a goal-scorer for you,” Henrik Lundqvist said to reporters. “That’s why we signed him.

“I owe him dinner”

Many heads shook when the Rangers dished out $37.5 million over five years for the oft-injured Wild star. Was this just another Blueshirt blunder or could Gaborik become the player the team craved.

“I don’t think he was playing all that great up until that point, but that’s the difference when you have this type of player, a gamebreaker – at a key time he ends up producing,” said coach John Tortorella to reporters. “That’s what he has to be about.”

Sure it’s only been four games into the season, but Gaborik looks right at home on Broadway. His skills have translated into Tortorella’s system and has paid immediate dividends.

Yet, his health is still a concern. The Rangers were smart to keep him out the first week of camp, just in case and then used him sparingly in the games he did play. Now the 27 year-old looks like he’s on his way to his best season, after missing most of 2008-09 with a hip injury.

And with that type of top line, Lundqvist can make all the mistakes he wants, because he knows, that Garborik will be there to back him up.

The young forward, who is holding out on a contract dispute, was absent as the Rangers began training camp today and as General John held his first workout, he had some harsh words for Dubinsky.

“It’s stupid,” he said. “I am not going to get into negotiations, but it’s stupid. He’s a young man going through the process of understanding what it means to be a pro. I don’t know where the thinking is coming from but players need to think for themselves. I think his agent is stupid. I am hoping he realizes that there are teammates too.”

Dubinsky is holding out because according to the New York Post he refuses to sign general manager Glen Sather’s offer of a two-way contract worth $522,000. But because he is under a qualifier, the forward, who scored 13 goals with 28 assists last year, will eventually have little choice but to sign with the Rangers.

“I think he understands the feeling and understands how Glen feels too,” Tortorella said. “I was privy to the conversation he had with Glen the other day. He was honest and man to man and spoke to him as a friend. All different options. Whoever told him to do this at such a young age, it’s his decision and we move on.”

Speaking of Dubinsky’s teammates, they took the ice for the first time today for a 45 minute conditioning test. Basically they skated around the ice so Tortorella could test their stamina. Some did well, but others, like Donald Brashear, heard it from the coach as they took their laps.

“I saw some good stuff as you always do when you go through a lot of bodies like this,” Tortorella said. “I saw some disappointments. I am not going to name names, but there are disappointments. It’s the first day. It’s a hard test and it gives us an indication on what they did this summer.”

A bad first day doesn’t mean banishment. Tortorella may be harsh, but not that harsh. He will be looking to see if the Rangers are ready to compete as they get ready for the first preseason game on Tuesday against the Bruins at the Garden.

“It an accumulation,” Tortorella said. “You don’t put a black mark on a guy because it was a struggle today. If the same thing in our minds crops up in a week where he didn’t do his conditioning…some guys may have been nervous today and they froze up a little bit. It is not to make a quick judgment on these guys, you how you go through camp and make a judgment on these guys.

“We don’t want to knee jerk here, both the positive and negative. This is the process we go through. I want to see how they go through the camp as individuals and make our determination.”

Notes: Marian Gaborik was held out of the skate today because Tortorella said he wanted to take a precaution with his injured hip. “We just wanted to be careful,” he said. “He did a lot of testing and we just wanted to be careful about. He was skating the other day and he was a little sore from that. We wanted to try to mange that.”

Dan LaCouture, who was a Rangers from 2002-2004 was in camp on a conditional tryout. He called Sather yesterday looking for a team after a deal in Russia fell through. The left wing drove down last night and is in camp with little expectations. “I am just happy to be here and looking for a job. I have no exceptions right now,” he said. Last year the Rangers did something similar with Petr Nedved.

Speaking to the press before yesterday’s game, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon apologized for Minaya’s slight of Daily News reporter Adam Rubin and said that Minaya felt remorse about the situation.

“[Minaya's] not in a great state right now, this has taken a great toll on him, and I think if you guys can give him a day or so, he’ll be back to Omar.,” Wilpon said in front of the Mets dugout before his team’s beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-0. “And if we can all give him a chance, I think he’ll come back and make this organization proud.”

Wilpon hopes that will be that for this embarrassing episode, yet something tells me that it won’t be. For the rest of the season, and even next year if Minaya survives there will always be questions about his motives. Will his temper get the best of him again? Will he hold another reporter responsible?

It’s obvious from the columns that came out over the past few days, the New York press won’t let up on the Mets. Minaya made the situation worse. Until now, he got the benefit of the doubt. His friendly demeanor allowed the press to do it’s job, so even if the Mets floundered, there was very little rumbling about Minaya’s future.

Yet now, Minaya will get the Glen Sather treatment. The reclusive president of the Rangers gets lambasted by the press because of his unwillingness to deal with reporters. He never is available during the season, unless you there’s a trade or some sort of move when he has to deal with the press. Before he fired Tom Renney, he let the coach be the face of the organization, something he seems to be passing on to the media unfriendly John Tortorella.

Unfortunately for the Mets, they don’t have a field manager, who wants to take that mantle. Although Jerry Manuel is very media friendly, he also seems to be happy playing the role of paid employee rather than front man.

That’s fine but if Minaya won’t be the face of the organization, and Manuel doesn’t want the job, then who?

The answer is obvious: Jeffrey Wilpon.

Wilpon has been more accessible than most owners. He conducted a number of media tours and has a good relationship with the press. Unlike the Yankees who let Brian Cashman has proven to be a very articulate general manager speak for them. The Mets don’t have someone on that level. Minaya is a very poor public speaker and as Monday proved can’t run a press conference. He’s great one-on-one but in front of a room, there are obvious problems.

So Wilpon needs to step up and take command during these situations. He also should utilize marketing director David Newman to speak for the organization when the situation merits it. That will allow Minaya to do what he does best, which is deal directly with players, agents, and other general managers to make the Mets better. He has proven to be an excellent free agent signer, even if some didn’t turn out like planned.

But something needs to be done. Monday’s press conference was a fiasco for the organization, which is now reeling the embarrassment. If Minaya is the man to build the future for the Mets – and the jury is still out on that – then Wilpon needs to make changes in order to prevent another fiasco from happening.

In related news, Islander fans declared they want the Cup after seeing John Tavares at rookie camp while Ranger fans took to the streets demanding Glen Sather be fired. Hey. One can dream.

So, is bringing back Lemaire the right move for the Devils? That depends on how much he learned from his Minnesota experience along with final days from the previous New Jersey stint. He gets to coach another talented player in Zach Parise, whose fresh off a 45-goal, 94-point season. What does this mean for Parise along with ZZ Popp linemates Travis Zajac and Jamie Langenbrunner?

Knowing that writing off the Devils is like killing Michael Myers, I’m not about to jump the gun. If being a Ranger fan has taught me anything, it’s that you just can’t count out the Devils. They had plenty of success under Lemaire the first time and one Brian Rolston should be quite familiar with what to expect. He played his best hockey under the defensive mind in St. Paul.

I’m more curious to see how Patrik Elias performs. He was a rookie the last time Jacques was there and the subject of controversy in a first round upset loss to immortal Damian Rhodes and the Sens. A lot’s changed since with Elias now the all-time Devils leading scorer supplanting former assistant  turned Lowell coach John MacLean. He also has won two Stanley Cups including the memorable set up of Jason Arnott’s sudden death clincher.

Puck Daddy’s Greg Wyshynski accurately points out that Lemaire’s return pits him against former pupil Marian Gaborik, who signed with the Hudson rival Rangers. That should give a little extra juice to the rivalry. Why am I not the least excited?

Lemaire is bringing Wild assistant/former Habs coach Mario Tremblay and Tommy Albelin will be his other assistant with Hall of Famer Scott Stevens expected to play a bigger role as a special advisor. What that means exactly who knows. I’ll leave that to our resident NJD blogger Hasan.

There’s really not much else to say. This was expected once  Brent Sutter predictably quit to be with older brother Darryl in Calgary. At least the Devils brought in a coach who is passionate about the job and knows what to expect. Say what you will about Lemaire’s system but you’ll at least see more grins on that bench and a little more persona during the postgame.

Maybe it’s not all that bad a move. The Devil D didn’t exactly get the job done against Carolina. I guess we’ll leave the final verdict to Hasan.