from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Intellectually and economically, there wasn’t any doubt then and there isn’t any doubt now the Rangers took the prudent course of action on July 1, 2012, when they did not try to match the Canadiens’ four-year, $10 million offer to free agent Brandon Prust....

The Rangers are deficient in top-end talent and the players at the top of the food chain have been largely deficient through much of this unsatisfying 15-15-1 season that slogs on Tuesday night when no-name Nashville (OK, the one-name Predators: Seth Jones) comes to the Garden, that much is true.

But the absence of A-listers on the Broadway marquee is not an excuse for an absence of work ethic or energy. Quite the contrary. The problem is, the Rangers have no one to supply energy the way Prust did; no one to jump-start the team and infuse his teammates with hockey courage the way No. 8 did during his tour on Broadway that ran for less than 2 ¹/₂ seasons.

Never has a fourth-line Ranger had the impact Prust did. Never has a grunt been missed so much by a team that thrived on grunt work in 2011-12 and hasn’t been more than a pale facsimile of that since losing the conference finals to the Devils (if not sometime in the previous series against the Capitals).

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