Call Ups? Not Until LTIR

After last nights bad loss to the Caps, it has been made quite obvious that the Rangers are incredibly thin without Brandon Dubinsky and Chris Drury. P.A. Parenteau has played decently in his time with the big club, but you can tell there’s just something missing from this team. Well, in this case, there are two things missing; secondary scoring and consistent defense. Jeremy brought up an interesting point about Corey Locke, who is Hartford’s leading scorer, and Bobby Sanguinetti, who has been lighting up the league from the blue line (see stats to the right). Why not call them up?

While my personal opinion may differ –I don’t think Locke is the answer for secondary scoring– it does bring up an interesting point. The Rangers clearly do not have the personnel on the roster, at least on the defensive side of the puck, to compete in this league. It has been made painfully obvious that Michal Rozsival’s best days are behind him, and that Dan Girardi has continued his regression that started last season. Luckily for the Rangers, they have two pieces in Hartford that can attempt to fill this hole: Ilkka Heikkinen and Bobby Sanguinetti. Neither impressed in camp, but both are excelling in Hartford.

As for secondary scoring, the Rangers have the pieces on the roster, they just aren’t delivering. But I digress.

The problem with the call ups is that the Rangers have a very limited amount of cap room, and the more bodies they have up, means the less room they will have at the deadline to make a deal. Remember, for each day the Rangers have a call up on the roster, it counts towards the overall cap hit.

The solution is placing the injured Dubinsky and Drury on long term injured reserve (LTIR). When a player is placed on LTIR, the team is allowed to go over the cap by that players’ pro-rated salary. So if the Rangers LTIR Drury, they can go over the $56.8 million cap by roughly $7 million, or whatever the prorated amount of Drury’s contract would be. Same goes for Dubinsky. This allows the Rangers to make their necessary call ups without sacrificing precious cap room at the deadline.

It makes you wonder if/when the two injured centers are going to be placed on LTIR. If John Tortorella believes that the pieces are currently on the roster, they won’t be LTIR’d. With a condensed schedule coming up, six games in ten days, calling up some bodies from Hartford might be useful