Sean Avery got away and Jaromir Jagr may be the next to go. Even the always lucrative Cablevision money isn’t enough to get the big name this year to the Garden.

So what’s Glen Sather to do?

Make a trade, of course.

After inking Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival on Tuesday, Sather delt some of his blue line strength for some high powered scoring yesterday when he acquitted forwards Nikolai Zherdev and Dan Fritsche from the Columbus Blue Jackets for Fedor Tyutin and Christian Backman.

“Zherdev is a player we have targeted for several years,” said Sather in a conference call. “We looked at making a deal with them last year before they made the management change and we were in Columbus a couple times to look at Zherdev and Fritsche and the situation just came about today. We had a little discussion about it yesterday.

“I wasn’t necessarily trying to move Tyutin but Backman we picked up last year because we needed protection on defense and this deal sort of fell in our laps. But it’s something that’s been in the works for a while, although we never really got down to the players we were willing to move.”

The fourth overall pick in 2003, Zherdev had a career year in 2007-09 with 26 goals and 35 assists. Although very talented, he also can be considered very lazy and will need Ranger veterans like Scott Gomez, who he is expected to line with and Chris Drury to keep the 23 year-old on track.

Despite that, Sather feels the Russian wing makes the Rangers more talented, while shedding some age.

“As we’re progressing through this, we’re trying to get younger, and we’re trying to get more talented and we’re trying to get faster,” Sather said. “If you look around the league, that’s the way the league is going. It’s not necessarily going with guys that are 35 and up. There’s a certain chemistry inside the team that we’re trying to get to and we’re gradually getting there.”

Also coming to Broadway is the 22 year-old Fritsche, who will compete on the lower lines for a job. Last season he scored 10 goals with 12 assists in 69 games.

What’s more important is the money the Rangers are able save on the cap for the coming season. Tyutin and Backman’s contacts would have hit the Rangers for almost $5.2 million, while the two new players will come in at about $3.2 million depending on what Fritsche comes in at in his qualifying contract.

So Sather will have money to play with and he does plan on getting some veterans to fill out the roster and that may include Jagr, but the general manager didn’t seem optimistic.

“I still think it’s necessary,” Sather stated, “to have experienced, talented people in your lineup to help these guys develop and Jaromir certainly has been a great player for this organization and I’m not ready to say goodbye to him. He may be ready to say goodbye to us. I can’t say that for sure.”

One thing’s for sure though, with Avery gone and Jagr probably moving on as well, it will be a very different Ranger team next season.