Last season, when the Rangers were on the verge of self-destructing, it was the February acquisition of agitator-extraordinaire Sean Avery that ignited the team on a run that secured them a playoff spot. Avery may be having a similar effect on the team this year, making it all the more important that the team locks up the unrestricted free agent-to be long before he hits the open market this summer.

For much of this season, the Rangers struggled despite the addition of big name free agents like Scott Gomez and Chris Drury in the off-season. Over the last few months, though, the team has been among the league’s elite, going 18-5-5 over their last 28 games. The team’s success can be attributed to several factors. The emergence of the team’s youth, such as Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan and Nigel Dawes, has been complimented by Drury finally settling in as a Ranger.

Equally as important, however, has been the re-emergence of Avery. Avery battled injury problems all season, missing 25 games and playing hurt in many others through the first half of the year. Since the All-Star break, however, Avery has been on fire. While Avery was a -2 with just 15 points, including four goals, in 26 games before the mid-season classic, the 27-year-old is a +10 with 11 goals and seven assists in 26 games since.

After an altercation earlier this season during a game against the Maple Leafs in Toronto, the NHL came down hard on Avery and made it clear that it would no longer tolerate his antics. The move caused Avery to rely less on his pest-like abilities and more on his hockey skills.

So far, it doesn’t seem as if the change has hampered Avery’s play as he continues to prove that he’s a better hockey player than his reputation would lead most fans to believe. Avery has managed to spotlight his quickness, excellent positioning and deadly wrist shot while curbing his dramatics. It’s even fair to say that, despite his occasional distractions, Avery has become a leader of sorts for the Rangers.

Re-signing Avery won’t be easy, though. Avery’s contract situation was messy to begin with as he and the team went through an unattractive arbitration battle last summer. The arbitrator awarded Avery a one-year deal worth $1.9 million, which Avery took in stride, looking to prove his worth this season.

Things got even uglier earlier this month when Avery and the Rangers were “far apart in each other’s view of his worth as a player.” Avery is looking for a contract of around $4 million per season while the Rangers are only interested in paying him $2.5 million for each campaign.

The Rangers’ point of view on the situation is, in many ways, understandable. For one, Avery has still never scored 25 goals in a season. Yes, he may very well have accomplished that this season if not for his injury problems, but, at the same time, his pesky and hard-nosed style of play makes it very likely that injuries may be par for the course later in his career. His well-known attitude problems are probably still in the back of Sather’s mind somewhere, even though Avery has managed to handle himself professionally of late. Worst of all, the large contracts that Sather gave to Drury, Gomez and Henrik Lundqvist have hampered his maneuverability under the salary cap.

Still, Avery has made it clear how important he is to the Rangers. While $4 million a season may be a bit much, if the Rangers can whittle him down to somewhere between $3-3.5 million per year it would be a sound investment for Sather to make.

Update, 3/29 – Yes, I still stand by this, despite Avery’s most recent off-ice debacle, with him being an alleged customer of high-priced madam Kristin Davis. Avery is denying it, but the bottom line is, Avery isn’t Eliot Spitzer, he’s a hockey player. A good one that has, for the most part, been a much bigger positive for the Rangers than a negative. Sign him, Slats. You won’t regret it…probably.

Well, at least it wasn’t boring, eh?

Apparently, Sunday afternoon’s game at the Garden between the Rangers and the Flyers was replaced with a match-up between a bunch of angry 14-year-olds.

That’s the way it looked, at least.

This was as sloppy and irresponsible a game that I’ve seen two teams play in the “new” NHL, especially when it comes to Tom Renney’s monstrously defensive post-lockout Rangers. I really thought Renney was going to have a heart attack during the first intermission. Luckily for the team (and the bench boss’ health), the Blueshirts came away with both points, though it sure would have been pleasing to deny the Flyers the point they got.

You do have to give the coach credit, though, because it was his decision to replace Henrik Lundqvist with Steve Valiquette at the start of the second period that probably settled this team down enough so they wouldn’t discombobulate.

Renney didn’t replace Lundqvist because the King was playing that bad, although it wasn’t Henke’s best performance, but rather because he knew that inserting Valiquette would cause the rest of the team to, at the very least, be a tad more responsible. It didn’t hurt that the backup played pretty well, though.

Still, the irresponsibility on the part of the Rangers, especially their defense, was at times jarring. I’d be remiss if I, once again, didn’t point the first finger at the Garden faithful’s newest whipping boy, Christian Backman. The guy was being booed in his second game with the team. What an achievement, huh?

I think the real reason the Rangers got this guy wasn’t to add depth because of Paul Mara’s injury. The secret strategy is to throw this guy to the proverbial wolves, increasing Marek Malik’s standing with the crowd and thus his confidence, simply by default. By the way, Malik’s been a lot better for the past few weeks, though he had a couple of brain farts against Philly, too.

Back to…Backman, though. Now, to be fair, he did score his first as a Ranger and was even responsible for one or two very nice rushes up the ice. His play defensively, though, was once again quite poor. I try watching the guy for an entire shift and its like the guy hasn’t learned the first thing about a defenseman’s job in terms of positioning. Backman again took a couple of stupid penalties, one of which cost the Rangers a goal against.

Speaking of first goals, Freddy Sjostrom made a much better impression in his first home game as a Ranger than he did on the road. His debut goal wasn’t pretty, but his willingness to go to the net, battle and not give up on the play was certainly a welcome sight. Most importantly, he seems like he can add that offensive punch to that fourth line that has been missing from this team all year. Even the fourth line has to chip in offensively, at least once in a while. Sjostrom made a couple of decent defensive plays throughout the game, as well.

The guys who really stood out for me today, though, were Ryan Callahan and Nigel Dawes. This was a game right up Cally’s alley, since he plays a fast-paced, hit anything that moves game every night, but Dawes isn’t always as aggressive. He was in this contest, though. Dawes finished all of his checks and created a lot of scoring chances. His goal in the shootout was a beauty. Go watch the highlights again. The move he made on Martin Biron was subtle but, in my opinion, one of the nicest I’ve seen all year.

I’ve harped as much as I can about how great Dubinsky, Avery and Jagr have been playing lately, so I won’t go into it too much, but let’s just say they didn’t let up this game, either. They didn’t show up on the score sheet aside from a Jagr assist, but they were all flying. Jagr continued to make the kind of moves he hasn’t shown until lately. They had a few really excellent forechecking shifts, too.

Bottom line, the team can be happy they walked away with two points after such a wild game, but with a home-and-home against the Fishsticks coming up, now is not the time to get sloppy.

It was a good sign for the New York Rangers that the craziness of the trade deadline didn’t change the team’s mindset when they took the ice Thursday night in Carolina. Sticking to the same philosophy that has led the Blueshirts to an 11-3-2 record over their past 16 games, they dominated much of their 4-2 victory over the Hurricanes, despite a supremely horrible debut from newcomer Christian Backman.

Backman aside, the team gave an inspired performance against a depleted, but surprisingly hot ‘Canes team. Even without key players like Rod Brind’amour, Justin Williams and Tim Gleason, Carolina had gone 6-1-1 before the Rangers rolled into town.

The Rangers, though, quickly set the tone for the game, led by their red-hot first line.

Brandon Dubinsky and Sean Avery continued to play incredibly well, using their speed and skating to outwork and out hustle the opposition, while Jaromir Jagr has maintained the willingness to adapt to their styles and do what is necessary to compliment their game.

On the team’s first goal, aggressive forechecking from the trio paid off when veteran Carolina blueliner Brett Hedican turned the puck over right to #68. Jagr made an absolutely perfect behind-the-back pass to Dubinsky, who deked forehand and pulled the puck back to his backhand and lifted it past a beaten Cam Ward.

You could almost see Jagr glowing and his confidence rising every time something he’s done in recent games has paid off. Similarly, Dubinsky has had this look on his face every time he’s scored of late, as if he can’t quite believe that what’s happening to him is real. It’s a facial expression, I’d be willing to bet, that has graced the faces of many a Ranger fan of late.

Everything seems to be going right for this trio. Avery, on the team’s second goal, fired a picture-perfect wrister right after coming off the bench and just skating to the blueline. The line played so well this game that any highlight package of this contest is dominated by their names.

Their success was only highlighted further by the fact that the other lines continued to contribute. On the Rangers’ third goal, Chris Drury executed his job perfectly on the power play, skating right to the top of the crease just as Dan Girardi fired a shot from inside the blueline. Ward made the save, but Drury was there at the perfect time to bury the rebound.

Even when the team faced adversity in this game, with Carolina’s Erik Cole netting a pair of fluky goals, the Rangers answered right back. Scott Gomez, leading a rush, dropped the puck off to Nigel Dawes, who continued to show flashes of brilliance by feeding a beautiful pass to Brendan Shanahan. Shanahan doesn’t seem to be able to do much anymore, other than shoot, that is. His shot off of Dawes’ pass was just the insurance marker the Blueshirts needed.

About the only negative for the Rangers in this game was the play of Backman. Paired with Marc Staal for his first game with the team, Backman was, frankly, horrible. Apparently, those Marek Malik comparisons were rooted in truth.

Backman made a number of turnovers in his own zone as he either took too long to make a play or simply mishandled the puck. Backman was given six penalty minutes in this game, also guilty of a double minor for high-sticking that was awarded to Staal. To be fair, Backman did serve a holding minor that should have gone to Blair Betts.

In general, when the Hurricanes were able to build momentum in the second half of the game, it was in large part due to Backman’s ineffectiveness in his own zone. Almost every time he stepped on the ice in the second and third period, the Hurricanes were able to keep the puck in the Rangers’ end. He was often caught out of position, forcing his teammates to scramble and forcing Henrik Lundqvist to work harder than he should have on this night.

All that said, it must be noted that this is the guy’s first game with a new team. He was probably under a lot of stress and pressure and even a performance this bad is forgivable under those conditions, assuming his play improves in the coming weeks.

It’s tough too complain about the other newest Ranger, Fredrik Sjostrom, who skated with Betts and Ryan Hollweg on the fourth line. Sjostrom was largely invisible, though he did show off his impressive quickness in one rush, driving to the net before being stopped by Ward on the doorstep. Defensively, he seemed more or less responsible, in his limited ice time. Tom Renney gave him the opportunity to skate with some other lines when players like Avery were serving extended time in the box.

I’d venture to guess that Backman and Sjostrom would stay in the lineup on Sunday against the Philadelphia Flyers, though Renney better hope Backman settles down. A loss against a division rival that’s still in the thick of the playoff race is not what the Rangers need right now.