Dump Jagr, Give Drury the "C" and Go Young

Steve Soldwedel at the Blue Seats says this...

"Slap the C on Chris Drury and see what happens. It's time to go young with this team. Jaromir Jagr , despite his amazing performance in the post-season -- and I have to qualify this with an "I believe" -- dogged it in the regular season so he would be eligible for free agency rather than activate his contract option...

...Glen Sather will do whatever he's going to do, but in the imaginary world where I'm the GM, I let Jagr walk. I dump Rozsival, Malik, Tyutin and Backman on defense. Bring up Hutchinson, Sanguinetti and Sauer or Potter. Cut loose Hollweg, Straka (that's a maybe) and Valiquette. Make room for Korpikoski, Anisimov and LeNeuveu or Lafleur. It's time to follow the examples elsewhere in the league, where clubs are using their young talent and it's paying dividends. Imagine where Marc Staal would be now (two or three years into his career) if given the shot his bothers had gotten."

...Soldwedel and the other guy who writes on this blog, Cyrgalis, have to be the two most uninformed Ranger fans ever. If you don't remember, Cyrgalis is the guy who said Avery is bad for hockey (see here) despite the fact that he brings in fans that wouldn't otherwise care about hockey.

...back to Soldwedel. It's fine that he doesn't want to re-sign Jagr and give Drury the "C". I think many Ranger fans agree with that. But then he says dump Tyutin and Backman. Umm...Steve, Tyutin just signed a new deal and Backman is under contract for next year. Dumping these guys while taking the salary cap hit is not very smart. Then he says to cut loose Valiquette and bring up LeNeuveu. What? Valiquette is the perfect back-up and will be re-signed very cheap.

...finally he takes a shot at the Rangers organization for not giving Staal a shot earlier similar to his brothers, when everyone knows that defensemen need longer to develop. You know where he might be now? He might be out of hockey because the Rangers brought him up too early and he couldn't handle it.

...the only thing I agree with is dropping Hollweg as soon as possible.

...you wonder how guys like this get jobs writing about the Rangers. Although it is the Post.