If Sean Avery hadn’t gone down with a sprained left shoulder, chances are pretty good Dave Scatchard would not have skated with the Rangers as he did yesterday on the first day of a tryout, and as he is likely to do regularly before too long as the club’s third-line center.
From the summer moment the Rangers sent Matt Cullen back to Carolina, it was all but inevitable Tom Renney would seek a veteran replacement to skate between young snipers Petr Prucha and Ryan Callahan, regardless of how good rookie applicants Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov looked in training camp.
Dubinsky lasted all of two periods as the third-line center after winning the job in camp, and got an astonishingly inadequate 2:58 of ice in Wednesday’s 2-1 loss to the Islanders.
If Avery hadn’t gone down, Renney probably would have shifted either Avery or Martin Straka into the middle between Prucha and Callahan. But without Avery on the left side, the Rangers can’t afford to move Straka off the flank.
Hence they turned to Scatchard, a 31-year-old, two-way pivot of past repute who played for Renney in Vancouver, whom the Rangers wanted to sign coming out of the lockout.
A free agent by virtue of the Coyotes buying out the final two seasons of the four-year, $8.4M contract he signed with Boston in 2005, Scatchard is safer than Dubinsky but doesn’t carry anywhere near the upside.
Expected to do no less than contend for a Stanley Cup and already in a prickly situation going into the fourth game of the season tonight at the Garden against Michael Nylander’s Capitals, Renney is going to choose safer. So would any coach.
“Dave is a power-type forward, who plays with an edge,” said Renney. “if he’s the player he was, he could probably help as our third-line center.
“But that’s pure speculation at this time.”
Scatchard recorded 45 points in 2000-01 and 2002-03 for the Islanders, getting a career-best 27 goals that latter season. He also accumulated at least 100 PIM’s in each of his first six years. But 2002-03 was his last complete season. Myriad injuries limited him to 61, 63 and 47 games in the three seasons since, the last two of which followed the lockout and the decision he regrets to sign with the Bruins.
“I was within seconds of signing here, but I wanted to win the Stanley Cup, and the team hadn’t made the playoffs in so long, I listened to the advice of my agent [Brian Lawton] and other people and signed with the Bruins,” Scatchard said. “I made the wrong decision.”
Only time will tell whether the Rangers are making the wrong decision regarding Dubinsky.