No one can blame Glen Sather for rejecting Jaromir Jagr’s proposal to come back as the highest paid Ranger. After all, the team wanted to spend its money on defense, while trying to get quicker up front.

So with Jagr dragging his feet with a decision and Sather no able to give him an incentive based contract due to changes in the salary cap, which would have deferred some charges to next season, the Ranger GM closed the door on the Jaromir Jagr era at Madison Square Garden.

“I think [Jagr] was terrific,” Sather said in a conference call yesterday. “He played hard. He was our offensive leader on the team and the feeling was any time he was on the ice he could take over a game. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

And good they were. For three straight seasons, the Rangers made the playoffs. Coming out of the lockout, Jagr had a career season setting Ranger records in goals [54] and points [124]. Yet his production dropped after due to a separated shoulder he suffered in the first round of the 2005 playoffs. This past season he had only 71 points, which was far below the 84 needed to trigger a contract extension.

“I told him that if he had gotten [84] points,” Sather added, “we wouldn’t be in this situation we were in today.”

If Jagr did hit the mark, he would have been back with the Rangers, making the most money on the team, while the Blueshirts only would be charged with a around a $4.5 million cap hit.

That option wasn’t available, so Sather said goodbye to No. 68 and hello to Markus Naslund, the Vancouver captain who will be looking to revive his career at 35 and took a two year deal worth $8 million.

Naslund scored only 25 goals with 30 assists last season, but is looking for a fresh start to get back to the numbers he produced earlier in the decade where he was a 40-goal scorer. By coming to the Rangers, he can now be reunited with coach Tom Renney and Team Sweden teammate Henrik Lundqvist.

“Having Henrik back there was a big selling point for me, because I’ve been fortunate to play with Roberto Luongo here for the past two years and I know how big of an impact a star goalie has,” Naslund said. “That’s where you’ve got to start building a team.”

With the Naslund move and signing of former Buffalo defenseman Dmitri Kalinin the Broadway makeover is complete. Sather said he has a contract offer on the table for Paul Mara and may bring back Brendan Shanahan if there’s cap room, although without a move to clear space that seems unlikely.

No, what you see now with Naslund, Kalinin, Nicolai Zherdev and Wade Redden will be the team playing at the Garden next season. And with Scott Gomez, Chris Drury and Lundqvist, Sather feels he has the horses to go beyond the second round in the playoffs.

“We’ve changed the style of our team considerably, we think, in the last few days,” Sather said. “We want to be more of a puck-movement team, and a little more of a free-wheeling team with defensive responsibilities.”

And for Jagr, Sean Avery and Martin Straka, that style did not include them.