New Ranger Eager to Get Settled In

The Brad Richards era has begun in a way that is familiar to anyone who has moved to New York to start a new job: looking for an apartment.

“I’ll live in the city somewhere,” he said Wednesday at the Rangers’ practice rink. “I’d like to get in here in the next few days. All I need is a bed and a TV.”

Richards, a low-key native of Prince Edward Island, can afford much more than that, having signed a nine-year, $60 million front-loaded contract with the Rangers as the most prized N.H.L. free agent of the summer. He is everything the Rangers sought: a Stanley Cup champion with Tampa Bay in 2004, one of the best playmaking centers in the game and a power-play expert who has scored 42 percent of his career points with the man advantage.

Rangers Coach John Tortorella, who coached the Lightning when they won the Cup and Richards won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs, spoke often last season of how much he admired Richards. It was no secret that the Rangers wanted him once he played out his contract with the Dallas Stars.

“I can’t wait,” said Richards, who turned down bigger offers from Calgary and Toronto.

Richards made his first public appearance as a Ranger at a skating party for underprivileged children held by the Garden of Dreams Foundation, Madison Square Garden’s charitable arm. He posed in a Rangers sweater and spoke about what it would be like to play again for the demanding Tortorella.

“I know how hard he is, but it doesn’t matter,” Richards said. “At the end of the day it’s about the players and about winning.”

Richards said he did not intend to barge into the Rangers’ dressing room and be a team leader, even with Chris Drury, the team’s respected former captain, gone. That role, he said, belonged to the players already there, like Ryan Callahan and Brandon Dubinsky, although he did not mention them by name.

“It’s their team,” he said, and that will remain true, assuming they stay with the team despite opting on Tuesday to go to salary arbitration.

“I’m a little quieter,” Richards said, and framed his role as someone who, to borrow a Canadian expression, knows how to stickhandle Tortorella and his moods.

“I can bring a little more experience maybe on the winning side, and maybe mediate a little bit with Torts, explaining how things work with him sometimes if it gets a little antsy,” Richards said. “But I’ll just kind of come in and monitor that as I go.”

But that is something for the fall. For now, Richards is trying to get settled in New York and get back into his off-season routine. On Sunday he will return to Tampa, Fla., and his trainer at the Athletes Compound, Jason Riley, who also trains Derek Jeter, and try to get him to return to New York in August.

“New York, I think everyone wants to come in here,” Richards said of his 10 years as a visitor with Tampa Bay and Dallas. “People come in here, they’re excited. They want to get a win so they can get a day off the next day.”

He said he was getting a lot of advice from two Rangers — Ruslan Fedotenko, who was a teammate of Richards’s when the Lightning won the Cup in 2004, and Sean Avery, a former Dallas teammate who is the Rangers’ resident man about town. Richards has vacationed with Avery and attended the opening of Avery’s Warren Street bar in 2009.

“He’s a good friend, he’s going to help a lot with the adjustment of living here,” Richards said of Avery. “I’ve been visiting in the summers a few times, and you kind of get an idea talking to him about the city and how it works.”

SLAP SHOTS

Brad Richards will wear No. 19, Ruslan Fedotenko’s number. Fedotenko said he would take No. 26, Erik Christensen’s number. According to Fedotenko, Christensen “said he didn’t really care.” Did Fedotenko charge Richards anything for giving up No. 19, as baseball and football players sometimes do? “What do you mean?” Fedotenko said. “We won the Cup together, and he was 19. He really wanted it. We have good guys in the locker room — if you start bargaining and selling, what’s next? Every time I give you a pass, you’re going to give me $500 for it? Come on, it’s hockey — it’s a team sport.”


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