There will be no ugly arbitration hearing between the Rangers and Dan Fritsche, as there was last year with Sean Avery.

And really, what could the team say? “We’ve never had him on our team, but we’re sure he’s a detriment”.

No word yet on terms. But is Blair Betts officially nervous?

Ryan Hollweg probably summed it up best after his ridiculously boneheaded penalty against the Penguins in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semis.

“I was playing my game,” he said at the time.

Which was exactly the problem.

The Rangers decided they could do without that game by trading Hollweg to the Maple Leafs today in exchange for Pittsburgh’s fifth round draft pick. With a surplus of checking forwards, the team decided to dispense of a homegrown player who seemed to have reached his ceiling in New York, and one who probaby would have a hard time playing again at MSG after one costly lapse in judgment.

More later…

Don’t know the whole story yet, but it’s no secret there was friction between Ted Nolan and GM Garth Snow last year. Here’s the official release:

TED NOLAN WILL NOT RETURN AS ISLANDERS HEAD COACH IN 2008-09

Snow will be available to the media at 2:00 PM at the Nassau Coliseum. Media should use the NY Islanders Executive Offices entrance on the west side of the building.

By way of Jeff Klein at Slap Shot, we know that  Alexei Cherepanov definitely won’t be in the NHL this year. This was already a foregone conclusion, and despite what Tom Renney said late last month about wanting the 2007 first round pick to at least be in attendance for training camp this year, don’t count on that, either.

By September, the CHL season will be in full swing, so it makes no sense for the Avangard Omsk right wing to pick up and leave just so he can eat alongside the Rangers’ other prospects at the Cheesecake Factory in White Plains.

As for whether Cherepanov could be a Ranger at least a year from now, here’s where the Rangers are essentially operating on faith. Given everything that we’ve already seen from the new Russian league, it’s safe to assume that Cherepanov will stand to make much more money in Omsk than he will in Manhattan. And for proof, he may need only to look across the locker room at new teammate, Jaromir Jagr.

But I also think Jagr could end up being the Rangers’ best salesman, because as disappointed as may have been that the Rangers didn’t make a harder pitch for him, Jagr had always expounded on the merits of the NHL in general and the Rangers in particular. At some point when talking to his new disciple, my bet is that message gets across.

Meanwhile, the same blog always has speculation that Brendan Shanahan of all people could be the next big NHL name to head East. It makes sense if you consider Shanahan hasn’t been bowled over with options by teams here, and his relationship with St. Petersburg coach Barry Smith. But I also have a hard time seeing Shanahan uprooting his young family to chase after a few more dollars in a foreign land when he can still find some sort of role on an NHL team, all while positioning himself for his long-anticipated next move after retirement.

First prize to the reader who can identify the source of the above quotation.

And speaking of character, the Rangers officially lost two popular locker room presences yesterday with the departures of Jason Strudwick (Edmonton) and Martin Straka (HC Plzen). Neither move was much of a surprise, and the argument could be made that both players needed to be cut loose for the sake of  the team’s long-term growth.

Strudwick’s case is a little more complicated since he provided the Rangers a fairly effective seventh defenseman/13th forward option while also serving as one of the locker room’s calming influences. Moving forward there is the chance that seventh defenseman spot goes to a rookie, but in the interest of not letting a young player sit for too long, more likely is the team carries six defensemen and only summons a player from Hartford on a need basis. Needless to say, this also has benefits on the team’s precarious cap situation as well.

But back to my point: how much does character count? Do the Rangers miss the professionalism of guys like Straka and Strudwick, or are those elements easily replaced? And even if they’re not, does it really have an impact on wins and losses?

The short answer is that there is no substitute for talent, and even if you have 23 guys with the perfect attitude, it doesn’t mean you can’t finish in the cellar of the division. But the other part to consider is it’s a long season, with various influences potentially tearing at a team’s fabric. Players like Markus Naslund and Wade Redden will be expected to fill the leadership void left by Jaromir Jagr, Straka, and Brendan Shanahan, and we’ve been given little reason to think they won’t succeed.

But you never know until a team is in the throes of another mid-winter struggle.

I believe it’s only a coincidence that on the day the NHL and the new Russian hockey league reached an agreement on player transfers, the Rangers signed defenseman Vladimir Denisov.

Denisov is from Belarus and spent most of last season playing for Lake Erie of the AHL. He had a whopping eight points in 66 games. So Brian Leetch, your records are safe…

Again, thanks to everyone for participating in the live chat. It was certainly popular, although one glaring problem was that not all of your questions got through.

With that in mind, know that we’re trying to figure out a way to avoid that moving forward, or at least to find a way to pick questions more judiciously. But like I said, there were a lot of questions so it was difficult to keep up.

I’ll be around later to discuss the issue further.

Thanks for joining us for our inaugural Rangers chat, which will begin at 10:30 a.m. Bear in mind this is our first go-round so we ask that you be patient if there are any technical glitches.

Should you not be able to make it live, the archive of the chat will be available immediately afterwards.

So the great meeting of the minds today at Journal News/LoHud.com headquarters has led us to the decision to launch our first live chat tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. Tell your dog! Tell your dentist! Tell your dog’s dentist!

Actually, bear in mind that tomorrow’s chat will be something of a dry run, so while I don’t anticipate any snafus, I won’t rule them out completely, either.

Should everything pan out relatively OK, you can expect this to be a regular feature of the blog moving forward in 2008-09, with an assortment of different features and promotions possibly introduced along the way. I will say for the record right now, however, that it will not involve me sitting in any sort of carnival dunk tank.

I should also note that you may notice our live chat format will look eerily similar to Zipay’s. I would say I’m copying him, but it’s actually just a case of us using the same software. And besides, if I really wanted to copy Zipay, I’d shave my head and start quoting obscure folk lyrics.

Yesterday it was the Rangers announcing they had signed on former Coyotes GM Mike Barnett as a special adviser to Glen Sather. Today I spoke to Frank Effinger, who was a Rangers pro scout until this month, but is now the Head Pro Scout for Phoenix (Frank, as I’ve written about before, also has the distinction of being my first-ever hockey coach, when I was a mite wearing my older brother’s 1972-edition shin pads. Despite that, he’s actually carved out a pretty nice career for himself).

Which leads me to point out again that despite the frequent comings-and-goings between New York and Phoenix, there are in fact 28 other teams in the NHL.

A quick review of some of the recent transactions between the two teams, which I suppose should begin when the Great One himself stepped out of a Rangers uniform and into an ownership position with the Yotes (by the way, these are all off the top of my head, so feel free to chime in):