It appears likely that when the New York Rangers take the ice at Madison Square Garden Wednesday night to take on the Toronto Maple Leafs, their captain Ryan Callahan may skate alongside the only team that he has ever known.
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The New York Daily News reported on Tuesday night that Callahan and the Rangers were closing in on a contract extension that would keep the free agent-to-be in a Rangers sweater for the foreseeable future and simultaneously take him off the trading block.
Rangers general manager Glen Sather was stuck in the position where he could either work out an extension with Callahan prior to the deadline, trade his heart-and-soul captain, or keep him on the roster without working out an extension and risk losing him to free agency for nothing in July.
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It appears, that the re-signing him option is what Sather has opted to choose rather than dealing Callahan prior to Wednesday's 3 p.m. trade deadline.
While Sather and Callahan have been able to meet in the middle in terms of years (six), they remain apart on what the final figure would look like for Callahan's salary. According to the Daily News, Callahan and his agent Steve Bartlett were talking with Sather Tuesday night hoping to ink a deal, but nothing has officially been agreed to yet.
The report indicates that Callahan didn't speak to the media after Tuesday's practice but also that the captain and his Rangers teammates didn't seem concerned that he'd be on the move prior to Wednesday's trade deadline either.
The two sides are reportedly $500,000 apart on opposite sides of $6 million as of Tuesday night and could still be working at getting something signed prior to the deadline.
Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault doesn't seem to want to see his captain go
"He's the captain of this team, and I'd take him as my captain any day of the week," Vigneault told the Daily News. "Both sides are talking, and as long as people are talking, I'm being optimistic."
Callahan's teammates are looking forward to Wednesday so that all of the deadline chatter is over, at least according to what Rick Nash had to say.
"Yeah, it'll be nice," Nash said about the deadline passing, according to the Daily News. "It's no secret everyone's waiting to get past that date and move on, but as players we can't control that stuff. We've got a job to do on the ice, and that's all we can control, so usually you have to let that stuff take care of itself."
Callahan, who has 25 points in 45 games for the Rangers (33-26-3, 69 points) off of 11 goals and 14 assists, is a team-first player who sacrifices his body to block shots and kill penalties while occasionally contributing on the score sheet.
Callahan, 29, has played all 450 games of his career with the Rangers. After Wednesday, it'll be known if his 451st game in the National Hockey League will be with the Blueshirts, or possibly, another team.
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