Season Opener

Happy October. We’ll do some season preview stuff  Thursday and Friday. Maybe you guys want to start out with your predictions for the Patrick Division (I’ll always call it that) standings, or where the Rangers will finish in the East, or …

The Rangers have awarded Alexei Semenov’s strong camp with a one-year deal believed to be worth in the neighborhood of $600,000. So the Rangers’ seven defensemen are set heading into Friday night’s opener, and they’ll keep a veteran and a big body around to push the top six, which may or may not change within a month depending on where Michael Del Zotto winds up.

Semenov has never played more than 47 games in an NHL season, which he did last year for the Sharks, averaging 13 minutes a game and finishing with 57 penalty minutes and a plus-3 rating. The 6-6, 245-pounder (his hockey stick was propped against the wall today and was taller than me, and I’m 6-1) was drafted in the second round, 36th overall, of the 1999 draft by none other than Glen Sather himself, and has bounced around a bit since - from Edmonton to Florida, to Russia, to San Jose, with AHL stops in-between.

The Slats connection helped him land a tryout with the Rangers a day into camp, and Semenov, 28, went and earned a contract just as his tryout agreement was ending. John Tortorella said that what impressed him most, other than his size, was that Semenov moved the puck better than the coach envisioned he would; still, he’s not speedy and he’s not going to fit the attacking-defenseman mold that Tortorella is striving to cultivate on this team.

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
- Bob Seger
Last night, as I sat reading the various and sundry [...]

Some of the most tense questions for the Rangers surround Marian Gaborik. The 27-year-old has topped 65 games only once in the past five seasons, and made it into only 17 games last season.