“Love the blog,” he said. “Keep up the good work.”

“I will,” I said.

OK, so maybe that wasn’t completely true. Because what I didn’t say then is those drinks were not just to commemorate the end of another mid-season hockey game, but to cap off my last game covering the Rangers.

When you consider all the ground we cover on this blog, I fully accept the news of me leaving the beat is relatively insignificant. And yet given the remarkable support this little sliver of cyberspace has received since its debut, the readers here at least deserve an explanation why I’m no longer going to be a part of it.

After 12 years at The Journal News — the last three of which were spent writing for the most devoted fans in sports — I am leaving to pursue a career in another sport I love, as a senior editor at “GolfDigest.com”:http://www.golfdigest.com/. The timing of the move isn’t great, and I admit it comes with a tinge of sadness. But it’s also an opportunity I’m fortunate to have, and a new phase of my life I’m eager to enter.

The good news, though, is this blog isn’t going anywhere. And appropriately enough, it will be Rick Carpiniello, the guy whose NHL column I devoured as a hockey fan and who went on to become one of my best friends in journalism, who will be returning to help steer this blog. If anything, it turns out I was just keeping Carpie’s seat warm for him.

As for me, this isn’t just any job I’m leaving, since it’s actually the only real job I’ve ever had. My first story for the paper that is now The Journal News was about a high school football game the fall after I graduated from college. Back then there was no internet version of the paper — actually, I didn’t even have a computer —  and the story I wrote was only buried inside the sports section of the paper’s northern edition. But it was still ample reason for my girlfriend and I to hop in my Nissan Sentra and drive 30 minutes to a coffee shop in northern Westchester, where I bought a stack of papers that all magically had my byline in it.

That girlfriend is now my wife and the mother of my two boys, and I’ve since been fortunate enough to write hundreds, maybe even thousands of stories about everything from the Masters and British Open to the National Hockey League

(As a fitting aside, my first Rangers assignment was the day before John Muckler took over as the team’s coach after the 1998 Olympic break. I was the only reporter at Rye Playland that day, and I clearly didn’t know what I was doing. Enter Adam Graves, who noticed the clueless look on my face, told me to follow him into the locker room, and then proceeded to give me everything I needed for my story. I wish I could cover his jersey retirement ceremony next week, if only to thank him for that characteristic display of grace).

When I took over the Rangers beat in the fall of 2006, I was skeptical that there would be much of an appetite for my occasionally offbeat musings about hockey. Millions of hits and tens of thousands of comments later, this blog has been one of the most intensive but gratifying ventures of my career.

I will miss it for all the reasons you’d expect: the beauty and drama of the  games, the spirited give-and-take with readers, the daily window into the most impressive but most humble athletes on earth. And I’ll miss it for reasons you probably wouldn’t think of, like the mornings after games, when I’d sit down at the breakfast table and tell my 3 1/2 year old son Charlie about everything I witnessed the night before.

When I told Charlie I was no longer going to cover the Rangers, his first reaction was tears. He has a Rangers calendar on his wall, and a Jaromir Jagr stick leaning against his garage, and he’s been fortunate enough to tag along with his old man to the occasional practice (even scarier, some of his favorite nighttime reading is from the stack of NHL media guides I have in my home office. Honestly, it was his idea). At that point, he figured his intimate connection to hockey was disappearing.  But I didn’t see it that way

“Charlie,” I said. “This means you and I can start going to games together.”

Amidst all the inviting prospects that come with a new career, that’s one I’ve enjoyed thinking about. I haven’t been to an NHL game as a fan since Wayne Gretzky still had a Rangers jersey tucked into the side of his pants. And yet the next time you see me at the Garden, I’ll probaby have at least one little boy at my side and the beverage of my choice in my hands (my writing might suggest otherwise, but that’s actually off-limits when you’re on the job).

I’ve made no secret of my affection for the game as both a player and a spectator. Hockey has been in my blood since I first wore a pair of skates at age 3 and began twirling around the small pond in our backyard, and that’s not going to change even as professionally my focus shifts back from ice to grass. I will continue to play, continue to watch, and continue to be a fan of the fine work of the other people who cover this game, many of whom have become good friends.

Maybe I won’t be here to chime in on a regular basis. But I’ll always be able to savor the time that I did. And for that, I owe all of you a debt of thanks.

Players made the case of saying that other than a five-goal third period, they played a good game, which is kind of like saying other than how they taste and smell, I really like bratwursts.

More later…

Or you can decide long ago—or better yet, have it decided for you—that you were never going in the first place, and instead enjoy the game from the comfort of your home.

This is not to disparage “the likes of Zipay,”:http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/hockey/rangers/blog/, who will at least get a chance to enjoy an overpriced sandwich or three from Bon Au Pain and listen to his beloved tunes while waiting for his flight. I’m just saying this is not one of those days when I feel like I’m missing out on all the fun.

But I digress. More important is that for all their shortcomings, the Rangers have quietly rattled off five of six, and allowed just eight goals along the way. It might not be hockey that inspires. But as I’ve said before, it’s hard to poke holes in it when it seems to work.

Tonight is another test, however. The Rangers will have Henrik Lundqvist back in net, and the Penguins look like “they’ll have Sidney Crosby back from a knee injury”:http://nationalpost.pa-sportsticker.com/default.aspx?s=nhl-news-display&nid=A2006261233093203A. Given that the Rangers’ lone dud in this recent run was a 3-0 loss to the Penguins on Jan. 18, I suspect the team will scrap together a better effort tonight.

But we won’t know for sure until later…

Update, 3:10 p.m.: Dan Fritsche cleared waivers and is still with the team.

Update, 7:15 p.m.: So Zipay “made it to Pittsburgh”:http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/hockey/rangers/blog/2009/01/prucha_on_first_line_callahan.html, as did the entire traveling party. I stand corrected. The news of the night is that Petr Prucha is in for Ryan Callahan, who will miss the first game of the season with the flu.

Because while a bunch of Rangers dispersed for points south—some to Florida, some to Cancun, others to Jamaica—Gomez opted for the lovely confines of the Rangers practice facility in Greenburgh. I hear it’s beautiful this time of year.

“He stayed back in New York and trained really hard. I know he came to the rink every day and lifted weights and got on the ice,” said goaltender Stephen Valiquette. “He was the one guy who used our break to focus on getting stronger for the second half of the year. I know he’s going to be outstanding the rest of the way.”

At least tonight Gomez was. It was one game, and from a team standpoint, it was ugly in spots. But Gomez was brilliant, and he, Markus Naslund, and Ryan Callahan offered glimpses of what a true top unit looks like.

Instead, Tom Renney said it was a case of  Fritsche needing to play on a regular basis. As of now, the team can’t assign him to Hartford until he clears waivers at noon, and even then, Renney said Fritsche would skate with the team tomorrow in Pittsburgh. But just like with Patrick Rissmiller, if Fritsche isn’t claimed by another team, he’ll probably end up in Hartford before long.

“Fact of matter is, he hasn’t been playing,” the coach said. “If he has to go down to play, so be it. He’ll practice with us, until somebody tells me he’s going somewhere else.”

As for whether sending Fritsche down would allow the team to bring up a seventh defenseman, Renney said it would be his preference, but that it wasn’t up to him.

“Yeah, it would be nice,” Renney said. “At this point in time, I should really just concentrate on coaching the team.”

Either way, this is probably an overdue measure for Glen Sather. But as tempting as it would be to lump Fritsche in with the likes of Patrick Rissmiller as far as offseason blunders, bear in mind that Fritsche was part of the deal that brought Nikolai Zherdev here. And chances are the team couldn’t have landed one without taking on the other.

Update, 4:10 p.m.: Thanks to Zipay’s calculations, the Rangers would save roughly $362,800 toward the cap for the remainder of the season.

(First prize to the reader who can guess the team’s top three playoff scorers that year. If you guessed Mark Messier, Pat Verbeek, and Adam Graves, you either cheated with the same media guide, or you’re Pat Verbeek).

But that’s the team’s goal coming out of the All-Star break this season, as “detailed in my story in today’s paper.”:http://www.lohud.com/article/20090127/SPORTS01/901270392/-1/SPORTS.

“Our goal is to get well over 100 points this year. If we get that, we can get one of the top three spots in the conference,” defenseman Paul Mara said. “Right now, if you look at the first four teams in the division, it’s so tight. Every game is vitally important for us, and we’re going in with that mind-set.”

Update, 11:07 a.m.: So I was half right. Or half wrong. Lauri Korpikoski is in, and will skate on a line with Nigel Dawes and Chris Drury. But Petr Prucha is in fact out again, meaning Aaron Voros will skate on a line with Brandon Dubinsky and Nikolai Zherdev.

“It’s specific of what our team needs,” Tom Renney said of the lineup decision, referring mostly to Voros’ size.

Renney also said he spoke to Voros about the three penalties he took in the last game against Anaheim.

“Talked to him about it. I think he had a tough call on one of them,” Renney said. ” And he was doing what we asked him to do.”
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The boys at the Faceoff blog tackle the question of the Rangers’ playoff chances this season. Check “it out here.”:http://faceoff.lohudblogs.com/