Staple's NHL Insider: Jokinen says his bad rep is just a bad rap

Olli Jokinen won't be reading this.

"The only way to keep a good relationship with reporters is to not read what they write," he said, quite seriously. Perhaps that's because, after being traded for the third time in 20 months, the 31-year-old Jokinen feels as if a label has been attached to him that he doesn't deserve.

Bad teammate. Bad guy in the locker room. Those are career-killers for a veteran like Jokinen, now a member of the Rangers, his sixth NHL team in 12 seasons.

He already had a label he needed to shed, having finally played a postseason game with the Flames last spring after 799 regular-season games, but now he's grown a bit tired of hearing about his supposed bad attitude.

"I don't really have to defend myself," he said Thursday before his new team faced the red-hot Capitals at the Garden. "Ask anyone in Phoenix, ask anyone in Calgary, I think they give you a different answer. I think that started in Florida. I got a bad rep over there. I think it was with the guy who was the GM then who's coaching now in Montreal. I don't know where 'bad teammate' started."

The guy to whom Jokinen was referring is Jacques Martin, who questioned Jokinen's leadership at the end of six futile seasons with the Panthers. Jokinen matured into a star in South Florida, scoring at least 34 goals four times, but apparently he was supposed to carry a young, shallow team into the playoffs on his own.

Jokinen signed a four-year, $21-million contract with the Panthers right before the 2007 trade deadline. He now knows it was a mistake.

"Obviously, if you look back, I should have probably left the team a couple years earlier, to be honest," he said. "I shouldn't have signed an extension there."

The Panthers flipped Jokinen to the Coyotes, whose money problems forced a deadline deal to Calgary last spring. Now he's been dealt again.

"When you get traded a few times, people start wondering, 'What's wrong with this guy?' " he said. "It's pretty funny, actually. When I get traded, nobody writes about what Wayne [Gretzky] was saying [in Phoenix], what Don Maloney was saying. Now nobody's writing about what Darryl Sutter is saying. It's only, 'What's wrong with Jokinen?' "

Now Jokinen has to produce.

"I'm not going to deny this is going to be a huge 25 games for me," he said. "I'm kind of sick and tired to keep moving. There's no better place to play than the New York Rangers. . . . Everything is first-class. Calgary was first-class as well, but that's Calgary. This is New York City.''

Souray says Rangers OK

Oilers defenseman Sheldon Souray reportedly has the Rangers on a list of six teams for which he'd waive his no-trade clause. Too bad he'll be out at least a month with a broken hand, beyond the March 3 trade deadline.

Souray wanted to come to the Rangers when he was a free agent in 2007 but signed a five-year, $27-million deal with Edmonton. The Oilers are last in the NHL and in desperate need of salary-cap relief, but so are the Rangers, who would: a) need the Oilers to take one of the onerous contracts of Michal Rozsival or Wade Redden; and b) need Souray to actually be healthy to help a playoff run. Neither of those is happening.