Poll: what to do with Cam Talbot

Cam Talbot has been an interesting story since joining the Rangers in Marty Biron’s stead at the beginning of last season. An undrafted free agent who blew the lid off his ceiling and went on to have a mini-breakout season as Henrik Lundqvist’s backup. He put up tremendous numbers (12-6-1, 1.64 GAA, .941 sv%), and by virtue of his age, can become an unrestricted free agent at the end of this coming season.

Now, this puts the club in something of a pickle. He has an incredibly small sample size of games to judge his true talent level. What complicates things further is that most goalies of NHL caliber talent can put up quality numbers in a small set of games. What makes a starter is the ability to hold up that level of play over a fairly grueling 55-65 game sample. We have no idea if Talbot is up to that task, and unless something goes catastrophically wrong, we’re unlikely to find out this season.

Usually, when a rookie comes up, we have several years to evaluate their place in the organization. While we don’t have this luxury with Talbot, we don’t really need to. He is 27 years old and will never be the starting goaltender in New York with Hank’s extension kicking in this season. He is unlikely to have designs on remaining second fiddle to one of the games premier workhorses for any extended period of time.

Which ultimately begs the question, how do we extract maximum value from the asset. The way I see it we have one of three choices:

• Carry him through the season and let him walk as a UFA
• Trade him at the deadline
• Trade him early in the season when someone loses a tender to injury/ineffectiveness.

Now, I know many will bemoan the first choice as not maximizing his value because he walks away “for nothing”. However, when an organization signs an un-drafted free agent, there are almost zero expectations of value for the club. For every Dan Girardi, there are 100 guys you’ve never heard of. Matt Gilroy is actually a success story amongst un-drafted free agents. Getting 40-50 career games of high value from Talbot is very much a win for the club. An effective backup for two seasons at near the league minimum has definite value. At the end, he gets rewarded with more money/opportunity.

Another option would be to unload him for maximum value for a goaltending starved team at the deadline. The question there would be, would a team give up enough for an unproven starter to gouge our goaltending depth right before making a run to the playoffs?

Finally, the club could go into opportunist mode and wait for the inevitable training camp injury and look to provide a “cost-effective solution” by trying to extract maximum value for Talbot at that point. The remedy for the Rangers would be to then go out and sign an remaining UFA goaltender (Brodeur, Thomas, Bryzgalov; fun, right?).

Getting back to the original point of this post, what do you folks think? Hang on to him for the year? Deal him? Let’s hear your vote in the poll and your thoughts in the comments!