The Rangers went 15-10-2 without Staal last year. They also won a playoff round without him.
In 2012, they were 23-9-4 before Staal returned from injury.
38-19-6 the last two seasons without Staal.
He's a good player. He's not elite. He was one of the best defensive defensemen in the game a few seasons ago.
There are 12 teams with a better record than the Rangers this year. You would think the top-12 teams in the league would have good to very good defensive defensemen. In fact, all teams have at least one guy who is solid at defending.
What the topic of this thread again? The future of Marc Staal.
If he wants more than 6 million, he should be traded. He simply isn't worth 6 million a season no matter what woulda-coulda-shoulda scenarios fans want to depict.
The time period you refer to, the Rangers had three top four LD's (McD, Staal and MDZ). That is no longer the case. As much as people love to re-write MDZ's history because of his play this season, we don't win as many of those games without him in Staal's spot.
Again, you aren't talking to some fanboy Staal apologist here. The first few months of the season, I repeatedly called him the worst defenseman on the roster based on his play. I was vocally worried that the eye injury was something he wouldn't be able to come back from. I didn't want to trade him quite then (I thought he deserved the chance to have the time to figure things out). After he came back from that concussion this year, he's been as good as I've ever seen him. Pro-Staal fanboys refuse to acknowledge his putrid play for the first couple months of the season. People on the opposite end of that spectrum refuse to acknowledge the very high level of his play over the last couple months.
At the end of the day, Staal is worth the money for two reasons:
1- He's playing at a VERY high level, and has put the fear of his eye injury behind him.
2- We have nobody behind him even remotely ready for top-4 NHL duty. Anyone we sign in FA will be almost as expensive and probably not nearly as good. He's going to be more expensive than Girardi partly because he's the better player (though G is an excellent D as well), but mostly because the Rangers need him more than they needed Girardi.
Frankly, I think we should have tried a top 4 of MDZ/McD and Staal/Girardi before we shipped anybody out. It might have solved a LOT of problems.