Wednesday Wrap Up: You Are Officially Allowed to Get Crunk

It's got three exclamation points. It must be good. Beverages Direct

• The Rangers might as well just dry hump the salary cap: They're that close to it. After signing Henrik Lunqvist to a one-year, $4.25 million dollar deal, NHLNumbers.com reports that the team is facing a cap hit of $51.69 million for next season. The cap is going to be only $50.3 million, so the Rangers have some cost cutting to do. Not only that, they only have 10 forwards signed and Sean Avery is still headed to arbitration. Maybe they can just roll three lines this season... In other Ranger news, Brendan Shanahan took a pay cut, and signed an incentive-laden contract yesterday. You would think that the Rangers would have learned a thing or two from the New York Knicks, their free spending Garden counterparts, but apparently not.
  
• Who knew it had been this long? BMR's 100th post.
  
• Richie Rich: Sid the Kid inks a monster deal. He extends his current contract five years, for a total of $43.5 million. That averages out to $8.7 million per year. This is a pretty risky move for Pittsburgh. Sid is an amazing player, and is certainly worth the money that he will be recieveing, but this move puts almost one fifth of the Penguins' cap space into one player. That can't be good.
• Merriam-Webster gets their crunk on.
• Alexei Yashin is not satisfied with your American Dollars: After being bought out by the Islanders, one might think that Yashin would come at a reduced rate next season. After all, he is being paid over two million dollars to not play for the Islanders this season alone. To quote Lee Corso, 'not so fast, my friend'. According to Yashin's agent, he is not happy with the contract offers that he has been receiving, and is threatening to play in Russia next season. If no team ponies up and offers Yashin a number he likes, I can definitely see this happening.
• More CBA dissent: SI's Darren Elliot weighs in on the impact of the rising cap on small market teams.
• What you will be doing this winter: The NHL schedule has been released.