Mike F-ing Rupp!

Maybe it is best that Brad Richards has weighed his options and is taking his time making his decision for next season. Because, you know, rash impulses are not always correct impulses.

When the news broke that the Rangers decided to put their line in the lake of free agents and fished out Mike Rupp, I felt that it was ... uh ... not good:

@ScottyHockey Rupp? Ewwwwww.

@ScottyHockey The guy scores one hat trick & Sather signs him. Awful.

@ScottyHockey So angry.

@ScottyHockey Mike Rupp played for the Danbury Trashers of the UHL & was the perfect fit: he was garbage. What next? Sather adds Jarkko Ruutu for 5 years?

@ScottyHockey Can't Glen Sather go one July 1st without making a signing purely to piss off Ranger fans?

@ScottyHockey Tryin to hard to not hate this signing but not doing well. Won a Cup, skates 10 min a game, scored that hat trick. But he's MIKE F-ING RUPP!

@ScottyHockey Rupp had better spend serious time with Barb this summer because he won't keep up with Prust & Boyle if he skates the way he did last year.

@ScottyHockey Nice Rupp, you enjoy ticking off the Ranger fans. I'm sure you will continue to do it.

Now that last one was in response something Rupp said to the guys at TSN. You can hear it here. He said, "You get the opportunity as an opponent to go in there (MSG) and try to tick off as many fans as you can and you like to do that cause those fans are so good and so crazy."

And piss off fans at the Garden he has. Over the years Rupp has been a burr in the Rangers' saddle with his checking, his fighting and, yes, his scoring. His hat trick was one of the lowlights of my Garden-going experiences in the last ... well, the last ever. As a Ranger fan, that was humiliating. Well, now it is up to Rupp to make other teams' fans feel humiliated.

He comes in making almost twice what Brandon Prust makes ($1.5 million vs. 800k) and will be expected to put in at least the same amount of effort. Rupp needs to take some of the fighting off of Prust's fists, play good physical hockey in all three zones, win some faceoffs and teach the kids what it's like to win a Stanley Cup. It is the very last part that takes some of the sting out of having one of the Garden villains of the last decade come in and don a Blueshirt. The young core of Rangers need to keep growing and they need to learn how to win. Trading for someone like Bryan McCabe didn't do either; adding a guy like Mike Rupp should facilitate both. So, as you can see, in the last few hours my stance has changed on the newest Ranger addition.

Let's hope that over the next three years Rupp doesn't change it back.