Just weird...

Well after the trade made news on Sunday, it finally went through early Tuesday morning. The Rangers traded Ales Kotalik (3 years at $3 million) and Christopher Higgins to Calgary for Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust.

Kotalik started off a house on fire this year with 12 points in his first 12 games only to sizzle out. He's been a healthy scratch for 8 of the last 9 games. Kotalik wound up with 8 goals and 14 assists in 45 games. He was also a minus 18 which is stellar. Higgins worked hard but has been snake bitten all year. Just 6 goals and 8 assists to go with a minus 9.

Jokinen will be the first number 1 type center to play with Marian Gaborik this year. Gaborik is the whole team so you might as well build around him. Jokinen's $5.25 million dollar salary also is up at the end of the year. Jokinen has a pretty bad reputation of not being a team guy but he could put up number playing alongside Gaborik. It's hard not to except for the guys on this team. The underachieving Jokinen is now third in Ranger scoring with 35 points. GM Glen Sather has tried to fix ANOTHER one of his free agent signing disasters and something tells me he's not done. He wants Ilya Kovalchuk... who wouldn't?

To be honest I'm more excited about Brandon Prust, who is second in the NHL with 18 fighting majors... it's about time. Aaron Voros has tried to be the enforcer when he plays but he can't fight. Donald Brashear should retire so there pretty much has been no one to defend anyone the whole year. Prust is a good middle weight fighter who will hopefully infuse some life into this lackluster lineup.

Sather has built a disaster. Every free agent contract he's given out has been awful except for Marian Gaborik. Has there been another free agent signing in the last 10 years you can remember that was good? I can't... Eric Lindros, Pavel Bure, Bobby Holik... those were great ones. Scott Gomez, Chris Drury, Wade Redden, Michal Rozsival, Donald Brashear... the list goes on.

The greatest part of this story is that although no one in their right mind would have paid a player like Kotalik $3 million... Sather somehow did it AND gave a 3-team no trade clause. Are you kidding me? Calgary was on that list... guess that worked out for you Ales... have fun bud...