On Ryan Callahan & Lauri Korpikoski...

I am happy with both news items that came out of Madison Square Garden yesterday.

First, Ryan Callahan re-ups for 2 years at an average of $2.3M per year. Considering Callahan had 40 points last year (22 G, 18 A) and earned his raise. Yet, if he was a veteran, he would be making a boatload of more money. For comparison, Ales Kotalik had 43 points in each of the past 2 seasons, and he got paid $3M. Chris Drury had the same number of goals (but 18 assists more) and is making over $7M. Scott Gomez had 58 points total and was making $7.357M. So would you rather have 3 Callahan's scoring 40 points each and playing hard every shift, or 1 Gomez scoring under 60 points while coasting through life?

As for Lauri Korpikoski being traded for Enver Lisin: Good riddance! I had nothing in particular against Korpikoski, except for the fact that he wasn't that good. You would think that 5 years after being drafted 19th overall in 2004 (1 spot before Travis Zajac and 10 before Mike Green), he'd start to fill in already. Some might call him a "late bloomer" and some might say he was "mis-used by Tom Renney and John Tortorella." But if you want the truth, he never was primed to be a top-line player.

Is Lisin going to be? Probably not. But he had 21 points in only 48 games last year, and he is blazing fast. He is so quick with the puck that he fits in perfectly with Tortorella, as opposed to the slower Korpikoski.

Korpikoski averaged less than a shot per game (63 shots, 68 games) while Lisin averages over two. For those who love Phil Esposito, you might remember that he always said that you can't score if you can't shoot.

Plus, he will be cheaper than Korpikoski to re-sign, if only by $100-200K. Still, every little bit of Cap room helps the Rangers.

Was Korpikoski mis-used? Not really, atleast not to the extent that Petr Prucha was while he was here. Korpikoski is an adequate checking-forward and penalty-killer, but he didn't have much more in his bag o' tricks.

While I'm not saying Lisin will be the Restricted Free Agent Who Saved the Franchise, atleast he's an upgrade over Korpikoski. Lisin has Nik Zherdev's potential, even though he might never use it. Korpikoski had Nigel Dawes's potential, even though he might never achieve such grand heights.

Plus, it's nice to see Glen Sather using the same game plan he had in the Summer of '08 - get as many 3rd and 4th line players under contract if necessary.