Rangers management has been fixated for more than a month on the twin sagas of Dan Girardi and Ryan Callahan, the former completed and the latter still pending.
But with Wednesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline fast approaching in the wake of a weekend during which the Blueshirts were whipped twice by bigger, stronger, more physically inclined and more confrontational clubs, the issue for general manager Glen Sather becomes larger than deciding whether to grant Callahan a contract extension.
Because the Rangers sure didn’t look anything like a legitimate contender that could afford to stand pat in losing 6-3 to the Bruins at the Garden Sunday night any more than they did in Saturday afternoon’s 4-2 loss to the Flyers in Philadelphia.
In fact, they looked like a team whose prospects for the future might be better served by moving Callahan for a substantial return as a rental than by locking up the captain for the next half-decade.
Of course, the burden is on Sather to leverage Callahan’s availability just as Callahan and his agent are leveraging No. 24’s pending unrestricted free agency to get the best deal possible. The Rangers gain nothing by giving away the captain for 50 cents on the dollar; if they are going to move Callahan, they must get a legitimate NHL roster player and either one prime prospect or a high draft pick.
If they do keep Callahan, then the Rangers must have a plan to bolster the roster around him, if not by Wednesday — nobody expects miracles — then during the offseason. The Rangers have to mix in size and strength, straight-line players with their speed and talent athletes. Odd isn’t it, how the balance has shifted over the last couple of years?
Sunday’s match was the 450th of Callahan’s Rangers career that began with No. 24 wearing No. 43 for his Dec. 1, 2006 NHL debut in, poetically enough, Buffalo. It is at least, uh, even-money it was his last.
But the captain, believed to have reduced his asking price from seven years at $47 million to six years at just under $42 million, still too rich for the Rangers, said he hadn’t given that a thought leading into or during the match in which he had one assist, four shots, two hits and a minus-two rating in 17:44.
“[The deadline] has obviously been on my mind, that’s no secret, but I didn’t look at it like that,” Callahan said. “My heart is here.”
The Rangers had their moments against the Bruins, many of them throughout a first period in which they took 14 of the game’s first 15 shots and 20 of 29 overall. But they couldn’t get out of the period with a lead, tied 1-1 going into the second, and then suffered numerous lapses in all three zones the rest of the way without getting necessary game-saving stops from Henrik Lundqvist.
“We certainly need to sharpen up and stay sharp in certain areas; primarily our play without the puck,” Derek Stepan said. “We have to get better and we will get better.”
The Rangers never bowed their heads, they never acquiesced, but they were beaten in too many battles after having been beaten back in the first period by Tuukka Rask. They wore down physically and mentally, blowing coverage in critical areas and a critical times, most notably allowing Gregory Campbell to come from about as far away as Boston as a trailer to bury Loui Eriksson’s feed for a short-handed goal at 9:04 of the third for a 4-2 Bruins lead.
The Rangers did create a pretty fair number of chances over the weekend, as coach Alain Vigneault noted in a spirited, but seemingly tone-deaf defense of his team. Come to think of it, if the Rangers had defended as well as their coach, they’d have swept the weekend and wouldn’t hold a playoff spot by only one point, as they do now.
“If you’re playing the correct way, one breakdown shouldn’t result in a goal-against,” said Callahan. “If you’re following the system, you should have support.
“We were playing that way going into the Olympics. I don’t know if it’s the break, not that it’s an excuse, but we’ve got to get back to that.”
Sunday, the Rangers were still “we” for Callahan. Maybe not for long.