This is the organization Rangers fans have dreamed of for generations — one that is rich in blue-blooded, blue-collar laborers who come to work with a single-minded sense of purpose that honors the season ticket-holders who pay the very expensive freight.
In New York, we expect our top athletes to make top dollar. All we expect in return is effort. That’s what this town is assured of getting from this group of Rangers that has evolved into a self-sustaining, self-governing body that quite cheerfully turned last week’s informal skates into a mini-Tortorella obstacle course in preparation for an accelerated camp scheduled to begin today.
“I’m not saying we’re the only team that approached it this way, but I’m proud of the hard work our guys have been doing,” general manager Glen Sather told The Post. “There are a lot of variables, a lot that can happen in a short season like this one, but one thing you can count on with this team is how much the players care.”
When Rick Nash arrived in Manhattan in July following completion of the trade from Columbus, he and his girlfriend were invited to Henrik Lundqvist’s apartment, where the Rangers goaltender and his wife toasted the new arrivals with champagne.
“I wouldn’t make anything special out of that, it was just that I was around, I knew he was looking for a place to live, and I just wanted to do what I could to make him as comfortable as he could be coming to a new city,” Lundqvist said. “I know I was excited that we made the trade for him, so whatever I can do as a teammate, of course I’m going to be anxious to do that.”
Lundqvist was hardly the lone Ranger to reach out to Nash. There was dinner with Brad Richards, calls from new teammates and from others inside the organization.
“As a player, it can be the little things that define an organization, and those were the things people were doing for me the first couple of days after I got here,” Nash said. “They show you that they care about you.
“You hear about it all the time, and now I see for myself that this is a first-class, world-class organization.”
They pay it forward, the Rangers do. They paid it forward by putting themselves through challenging skating drills last week in order to be as prepared as possible for today and for the 48-game grind that will commence in Boston on Saturday night.
“We feel we have a responsibility to jump right into it as much as possible without having conditioning as a concern,” captain Ryan Callahan said. “We want to be able to spend camp concentrating on the team system.
“We know what’s expected of us here and what we expect from one another. That hasn’t changed because of the lockout.”
* Yes, I think the Rangers’ offer to Michael Del Zotto of approximately $5 million over two years is eminently fair, given his Group II status coming out of Entry Level and management’s obligation to carefully count pennies dedicated to next year’s cap.
Mats Zuccarello, playing for Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL, remains on the Rangers’ reserve list and would be eligible to play for the Blueshirts this season — without clearing waivers — if he were to sign with the club following the end of his season in Europe. That represents a change in the CBA.
Similarly, management will keep a keen eye on a pair of 21-year-old forwards skating in the Swedish league — Jesper Fast of HV 71, and Oscar Lindberg of Skelleftea — for possible late-season NHL duty.
“I don’t know if it’s a good rule or not,” Sather said. “But we’ll sure take advantage of it if it makes us better.”
So teams will be penalized for sending players on one-way deals to the minors, even on contracts signed under a different set of regulations in the old CBA.
Teams will be penalized if players on front-loaded deals retire early, even those on contracts signed under a different set of regulations under the old CBA.
But teams who signed players to front-loaded deals and traded them prior to the lockout will not be held accountable if those players retire early.
Meaning the Flyers bear no risk on Mike Richards or Jeff Carter. You can call that lone exclusionary clause in the CBA “The Ed Snider Rule.”
* Of course Ilya Kovalchuk has an obligation to the Devils, which, by the way, he is honoring. But there’s nothing wrong whatsoever with Kovalchuk honoring the fans in Russia by taking a final spin in the KHL All-Star Game.
Maybe it’s lost in translation, but the herniated disc and back injury through which Kovalchuk played in the playoffs were serious enough that he could have been on the long-term injury list during the lockout, getting full pay on his 2012-13 salary of $11 million.
Oh, but I forgot. Kovalchuk is greedy.