Vaclav Prospal

Columbus Blue Jackets opened their 2011-2012 season last night in the sold-out Nationwide Arena against their divisional rival, the Nashville Predators.

Last week, the Columbus Blue Jackets hit their first bump in the road in their path back to the playoffs when winger Kristian Huselius suffered a torn pectoral muscle.

Huselius required surgery and will be out of the lineup until November at the earliest, most likely January.

The New York Rangers' winning ways continue as they defeated the Montreal Canadiens 6-3 at Madison Square Garden.

The Rangers offense was alive tonight, having six different players score and notching five goals in the first period alone.

The Rangers might want to start putting some four-leaf clovers around the locker room.  On Wednesday, New York Rangers coach John Tortorella announced that captain Chris Drury will undergo knee surgery and miss close to six weeks. 

Reports are coming out that Vinny Prospal will miss tonight's preseason game against the Ottawa Senators at Madison Square Garden, due to a lingering knee injury. Rumors are also leaking that he may miss the start of the season as well, hurting the Rangers in more ways than one.

Currently under contract the Rangers have seven players who played center for a substantial amount of time last season. These include: Brandon Dubinsky, Vinny Prospal, Erik Christensen, Chris Drury, Artem Anisimov, Brian Boyle, and Todd White. Out of these seven players only Dubsinky and Prospal were really used as wingers at any point during the season.

Brandon Dubsinky

The New York Rangers may or may not be done for the night, but in all likelihood, we will have to wait until tomorrow before we see any more moves. Today was an exciting day for free agency. It was not as hectic as in years past, but controlled. It seemed that early on, announcements of signings were coming at a nice even pace. That made it really easy for us writers to cover what was going on.

Even if the New York Rangers manage to slip into the playoffs, they must begin to look to the future, starting with their own free agents. The blueshirts must decide who they will bring back and let walk when the off-season begins.

1. Olli Jokinen (C)

2009/10 salary: $5.500 million

Okay, it's time to snap back to reality and dust off the Olympic break and jump back into the New York Rangers. Which, for those of you that don't follow hockey, is like being married to Jessica Alba for two weeks, only to then be forced to come home and go back to your wife, while she's sitting on the couch eating a pint of Haagan Dazs watching One Life to Live...

So, now that we're done with that two-week fantasy that was the Olympics, it's time to get down to business.

There's a line that's overused a lot in situations that it doesn't really apply to:

No one is safe.

A place where that may actually be true however, is at the NHL Trade Deadline.

There are very few names that will never get mentioned at the Deadline. In fact, we've even seen names unlikely to move at the deadline surprisingly switch teams.

Even players with "No Movement" or "No Trade" clauses aren't safe.