Sather no longer mortgages future for big names

There used to be only buyers and sellers at the NHL trade deadline, a swap meet of ever-increasing proportions where general managers tried either to get a big-name player at a steep price to put their team over the top, or tried to shed salary and age in return for youth and a shot at winning it all down the road.

In the salary-cap era, buyers and sellers have been supplanted by movers and shakers. Shakers, like Leafs GM Brian Burke, who took a disjointed team and tossed six pieces in the air on Saturday night, landing big-hitting Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf and former Conn Smythe-winning goaltender J.S. Giguere.

Rangers GM Glen Sather was once the biggest buyer of them all. Eric Lindros (not at the trade deadline, of course), Pavel Bure, Anson Carter, Tom Poti - he wheeled and dealt for half a decade, and the Rangers didn't make the playoffs once in his four pre-lockout seasons.

Now, Sather is a mover, taking the expensive parts he'd previously added and dumping them elsewhere. If the Rangers can finalize a deal with the Flames that would send Ales Kotalik and the $7-million and two-plus years remanining on his deal, along with pending unrestricted free agent Christopher Higgins, to the Flames for another pending UFA, Olli Jokinen, it would mark the second time in the past year that Sather has gotten out from under a less-than-stellar free-agent signing, the other being his July 1 trade of Scott Gomez to the Canadiens for Higgins and University of Wisconsin defenseman Ryan McDonagh.

The Rangers, pre-lockout, were always mentioned when a big name hit the market. So it made sense that when Phaneuf and Thrashers star Ilya Kovalchuk were rumored to be dealt, the Rangers were thrown into the mix. Of course Sather would mortgage the team's future to get one of those two, the thinking went.

Except it's not true anymore. Sather's free-agent signing record is still up for debate, but one thing has become clear in the cap era: He won't bankrupt the Rangers to get a playoff spot.

According to two league sources, the Rangers have never been in the hunt for Kovalchuk, who becomes an unrestricted free agent at season's end. He's a right wing, like Marian Gaborik, for one; for another, the Rangers don't have the salary-cap room right now to sign Kovalchuk to the eight-figure-per-season deal he wants.

But trumping all that is a simple fact: The Rangers will not deal their good, young players for a shot at a low playoff seed, which is about all this inconsistent group could reasonably expect.

Matt Gilroy was never part of the deal that's currently on hold. When Thrashers GM Don Waddell asked for two (or possibly more) players from the core young group of Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, Michael Del Zotto, Gilroy and Evgeni Grachev, plus the Rangers' first-round pick in June, the conversation ended soon after.

The four post-lockout Stanley Cup winners had one thing in common: A young, homegrown core of players.

The Rangers had that once too; Mark Messier was the linchpin that put that 1994 team over the top, but he would have finished a distant third in playoff MVP voting to Brian Leetch and Mike Richter, two Rangers draft picks.

At last season's trade deadline, the Rangers rented two mid-level players, defenseman Derek Morris and forward Nik Antropov, in exchange for a salary dump (Dmitri Kalinin), two young players whom then-new coach John Tortorella didn't love (Nigel Dawes, Lauri Korpikoski) and two draft picks. Antropov and Morris helped the Rangers to the playoffs and would have been welcomed back at a reasonable price, but they went to the Thrashers and Bruins, respectively, and that was that.

Now, the Rangers may rent Jokinen, the one-time Islander who has played 854 NHL regular-season games but just six playoff games, but they will have done so by shedding Kotalik's salary and Higgins, the Smithtown native who has had an incredibly hard-working, unlucky season in New York. And nothing more.

Movers, not shakers. That's the Rangers' new trade deadline motto.