Word comes from Andrew Gross on Twitter that Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky and Brian Boyle will file for arbitration before the 5:00 p.m. deadline later today. Glen Sather still seemed confident a few days ago that he would be able to reach deals with all of his RFAs before heading to any arbitration hearings, so there's no need to worry just yet Rangers fans. Filing arbitration is actually a good thing because it prevents other teams from being able to sign restricted free agents to an offer sheet and gives the team and players more time to work on a deal with each other exclusively.
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If you remember, a few years ago Henrik Lundqvist filed for salary arbitration and even had a date set for a hearing when he was a restricted free agent. Sure enough, he agreed to a one-year deal with the Rangers before the hearing that provided a bridge before he signed his mega-deal the following year with the team.
The only way these things can truly get ugly is if they actually go to arbitration, which is still a long ways away from happening. For those who are unfamiliar with the arbitration process, it's basically a court case in which the player and organization each must argue in front of a judge why they deserve the salary amount that they feel they deserve. The player has to argue his case and the team has to basically point out all the negatives and deficiencies in said player's game. After the hearing is over, the judge awards a salary amount that the player will be paid in the upcoming season. If the team doesn't want to pay the amount they can walk away and allow the player to become an unrestricted free agent. That happened when Nik Zherdev was a Ranger a few years ago, but then again he was never really going to be in their long-term future plans anyway. Things got ugly years ago when the Rangers went to salary arbitration with Sean Avery, but here we are years later and he's still a member of the team.
Also, some other news comes from Larry Brooks on Twitter, who Tweeted that the Rangers have hired Jeff Gorton as Assistant GM. No idea what this means for Mark Messier or Jim Schoenfeld's roles with the organization yet if in fact it means anything at all, but time will tell. Gorton served as the interim GM for the Boston Bruins and is responsible for signing Zdeno Chara as an UFA, and also brought Tukka Rask to the Bruins in exchange for Andrew Raycroft.
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