Rangers Analysis: Trades on the horizon?

I will be the first one to tell you to disregard any hockey rumors you come across from non-credentialed websites. In fact, on this site we have bashed and ignored rumors coming from sites that rhyme with bockeyhuzz on almost a daily basis. Those sites do nothing productive for hockey in any way, shape or form.

Recently RangerSmurf (hat tip to you my friend) broke the story that the Rangers might be in play for Andrew Cogliano, and they might be. That, however, is not the point. What is the point is that the Rangers brass is preparing to do something--or so it would seem.

Steve Zipay had an interesting tidbit in his blog saying:

Doug Risebrough, the former WildGM who was hired as a consultant by old friend Glen Sather and has been scouting teams in the West (loves Chicago, who doesn't?), was here for a private summit with the boss. Slats ushered him into his office halfway thru practice.

More after the jump.

Andrew Gross had his own say on the matter after the Rangers lost to the Hurricanes in OT, this actually circulated here a bit but for those of you who missed it here it is:

For this almost all of the blame has to come from the personnel: Too many guys contributing far too little. But it’s tough to see what can be done to correct that before the trade deadline, there are not many desirable parts that the Rangers would consider trading. Surely GM Glen Sather would trade Christopher Higgins or Ales Kotalik or Wade Redden or Michal Rozsivalin a heartbeat. But the last three have contracts, matched with their performances, that will have opposing GMs hanging up the phone. Higgins is going to be a free agent anyway so he’d return very little even if Sather does find a trade partner. The players other teams would want: Michael Del Zotto, Marc Staal, Ryan Callahan, Artem Anisimov, Matt Gilroy, Brandon Dubinsky, Sather is not likely to trade. And the organization obviously values Chris Drury highly, so even if he didn’t have a no-movement clause and an expensive contract, they’d probably lean toward keeping him.

And then in a more recent Steve Zipay post he said:

We're hearing rumblings from agents that with the Olympic trade freeze, which ends four days before the NHL trade deadline, some teams who've determined that they are out of contention in mid-February before the Games (Carolina, perhaps Anaheim, Toronto, Edmonton, Columbus) will be shopping UFAs and RFAs in earnest. Saku Koivu, anybody? More on that front soon...

So really let's be honest here, anyone can speculate so be careful with what you believe. What I can tell you is that the Rangers are talking to other teams regarding a move, I can guarentee it. Want to know how I know this? Hockey GM's are always in talks, or keeping their ears close to the wall or picking up the phone and "checking in" on other GM's. It doesn't mean that anything will come from it, and 90% of the time nothing does. But everyone--even the Capitals, Penguins and even the Red Wings--would be willing to hear what a team has to offer, they would be crazy not to.

So is it possible that Cogliano is on the Rangers radar? Of course it is, but who knows what will come of it. I can tell you this though, a reliable source is telling me that Bockeyhuzz doesn't (E5).