SUNRISE, Fla. — Yes, indeed, Cam Talbot was traded, and to the Oilers, and for less — maybe much less — of a return than had been anticipated. But at least of equal surprise on Day 2 of the NHL draft was the trade that sent Carl Hagelin to the Ducks for winger Emerson Etem and a second-round draft pick.
You can blame general manager Glen Sather for overplaying his hand regarding Talbot — Costanza! — and you can point to the club’s looming cap squeeze for the Hagelin deal, but the Blueshirts sure don’t appear to be as strong today as they were before the weekend.
Even Carmelo Anthony feels betrayed.
Talbot went to the Oilers, for whom he projects as their No. 1, in exchange for the 57th, 79th and 184th picks in the draft, the 209th going west to Edmonton. The return appears skimpy measured against the bounty Sather seemed certain he could extract for the goaltender who was so valuable as Henrik Lundqvist’s understudy.
Indeed, the Rangers had seemed confident they could either move into the first round or get a pair of second-rounders out of the auction that included the Oilers, Flames, Sharks, Stars, Sabres and Panthers. Indeed, as The Post reported Saturday, Florida had offered Jimmy Hayes, Kevin Hayes’ older brother, in a package for Talbot.
But as Sather juggled the offers, interested parties dropped out, withdrawing offers and moving in different directions. It is impossible to know exactly why this unfolded the way it did, but it seems as if the GM got greedy and it came back to bite the organization.
“At times it might have looked like there were better deals [available] but it didn’t manufacture that way,” said assistant GM Jeff Gorton, who spoke for the team. “In any scenario we would like to have gotten more.
“It went up, it went down; up, down. Sometimes maybe what was on the table was not what you remembered.”
The Rangers do seem to have done reasonably well in replacing Talbot, however, acquiring Antti Raanta from the Blackhawks ($750,000 cap hit) in exchange for AHL Hartford winger Ryan Haggerty. Raanta, a 26-year-old Finn, third on Chicago’s depth chart behind Corey Crawford and Scott Darling, went 7-4-1/1.89/.936 last year and is a career 20-9-5/2.41/.912.
Hagelin, meanwhile, was a cap casualty as an impending restricted free agent for whom it would have cost approximately $3.5 million this year, while taking upward of $4.25 million to get the third-line winger under a long-term deal. Those are numbers that would not work for the cap-strapped Presidents’ Trophy winners.
But they sacrificed something tangible in moving Hagelin, the club’s premier penalty killer who scored 17 goals in each of the past two seasons with 16 and 18 assists, respectively, and who was the sixth senior Blueshirt, having joined the club on Thanksgiving 2011.
“It’s a tough day; Carl was a great Ranger, a terrific guy and had a lot to do with our success the last few years, there’s no question about that,” Gorton said. “It was a nature-of-the-beast kind of thing, where we had picked out five or six different [trade] scenarios with him.”
Almost literally, the 23-year-old Etem is a poor man’s Hagelin; not quite as fast, not quite as skilled, not quite as hockey-wise, not as accomplished — and this is the crux of the matter — not nearly as expensive.
Coming out of his entry level deal, Etem also is a pending restricted free agent but without salary arbitration rights who will have a qualifying offer of $850,000 for this season.
The Rangers likely project Etem moving into Hagelin’s spot, but that’s probably a stretch, with the 29th-overall selection in the 2010 draft still a project.
Etem can skate, but he lacks advanced hockey sense, splitting last season between the Ducks and AHL Norfolk. He recorded 10 points (5-5) in 45 games for Anaheim, an NHL career 15-16-31 in 112 games. The winger scored three goals in 12 playoff matches for the Ducks, but was scratched four times in the tournament, including Game 7 of the conference finals against the Blackhawks.
The Blueshirts entered the draft with five picks before finishing with seven as a product of their deals. The Rangers used the 41st overall selection they acquired for Hagelin on Seattle left wing Ryan Gropp, who went 30-28-58 in 67 games in the WHL. The club then selected Swedish winger Robin Kovacs 62nd; Russian-born defenseman Sergey Zborovskiy 79th; Finnish center Aleksi Saarela 89th; Prince George center Brad Morrison 113th; Swedish winger Daniel Bernhardt 119th; and Green Bay goaltender Adam Huska 184th.