Renegades on FIRE!

The Raleigh Chronicle
(AP)
RALEIGH - The beginning of this season was a real shocker for Renegades fans across North Carolina. First, they learned that the Renegades had traded Sidney Crosby during the off-season, and then was the worst team in the league for the first month. It looked like their General Manager Jordan Levine had made some bad decisions and the fans looked like they were going to run Levine out of the town. Jordan stated that he thought the team was good, and he believed they just needed to build chemistry. He was hoping that the team would get it together in time for the playoffs. Well, it looked like that wasn't going to happen, when he recently announced that we was going to change his focus to next season. When Levine said this, it lit a spark under the Renegades, and they now see themselves 3rd in the conference! The Renegades started the season going 3-11-0-1. In their last 15 games, they have gone 13-2, and since early December, they have been 22-6. This team has been one of the best teams in the league since December, and it looks like they might keep rolling and could be a serious threat in the playoffs. They acquired Ray Whitney a from the Anaheim Tigers a few weeks ago. "Even though I had announced I was shifting into offseason mode, when I saw that Whitney was available, and noticed that he has scored more goals then anyone on our team and in less games, I was thinking, man we have to get this guy." says the team's GM Levine. One reason that the Renegades front line is so effective this year, is that they have a combined PIM of 18! The three of them, Whitney, Drury and Kane have only committed 18 minutes worth of penalties.

The only problem with this team, is they have a ton of veterans, and a lot of expiring contracts, so they are not sure what they are going to do during the offseason, other then they know that a lot of changes will be made. These changes will again most likely mess up the team's chemistry coming into this season, but hopefully it wont effect them too badly. The guys whose contract's are set to expire at the end of the season are: W Ray Whitney, C Shawn Horcoff, W Cory Stillman, W Dustin Byfugin, D Ian White, and D Mathieu Schnider. The one good thing, is this will free up a lot of salary space for the Renegades to go and acquire more players. Rumor has it that they might be interested in trading away some of their draft picks before the draft this offseason to improve their team. They have a number of draft picks, along with a couple more from the Crosby Trade.