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nivek_wahs
06-02-2007, 02:38 PM
http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83543&Itemid=160

Hunter gets offer from Rangers

(Sports) 9 hrs, 31 min. ago
by TED CLARKE, Citizen staff

The New York Rangers still have Eric Hunter on their radar screen.

It’s not the contract offer Hunter was hoping for, but the Rangers showed Friday they are still interested in keeping the player they drafted last summer when they made him a qualifying offer.

With the Rangers retaining his rights, that rules out out free agency for Hunter, whose five-year junior career with the Prince George Cougars came to painful end when he suffered a broken left ankle in Game 2 of the Cats-Everett Silvertips playoff series in April.

“Certainly, I would think he was hoping for a contract, not a qualifying offer,” said Cougars general manager Dallas Thompson. “A qualifying offer is really not that much, it’s basically the minimum they can offer you just to retain your rights. It might not be the best scenario for him. If they wouldn’t have qualified him he would have been a free agent.

“I know when a guy gets drafted, that NHL team has his rights for two years, but I don’t know about the new (NHL collective bargaining agreement) or how it applies to a guy who’s a graduate out of junior.”

Hunter could not be reached for comment.

Hunter, a native of Winnipeg, began his WHL career as a 16-year-old in 2002, after being taken as a first-round bantam pick the previous year. He finished with a team-record 111 regular season goals and 233 points in 323 games, having missed 25 games in 2004-05 with a broken right ankle. As the Cougars’ captain and top-line left winger this past season, Hunter totalled 24 goals and 31 assists for 55 points in 69 regular season games. Hunter has the distinction as the only Prince George Cougar to be picked twice in the NHL draft. He was taken in the eighth round of the 2004 draft, 229th overall, by the Chicago Blackhawks. The Rangers used a sixth-round selection, 174th overall, to draft Hunter in 2006.