Because he’s binged and purged more players then any other GM in Ranger history!

After today’s dealings, Sather has managed to purge the Rangers of every post lockout veteran except Henrik Lundqvist. While today’s signing of Ales Kotalik for 3 years at $3 million per year doesn’t exactly constitute a binge, Sather has most assuredly purged Nik Zherdev from next season’s roster. Frankly, I think Sather made the right decision. I have grown weary of having players on the Rangers who are oft described as “enigmatic”.

In an attempt to garner more players for John Tortorella’s run and gun scoring style of play, Sather has disassembled what was one of the best penalty killing units in the NHL. Gone are Sjostrom and Orr. With the signing of Brashear, one can only assume that free agent Blair Betts will not be made an offer to return. Now the question remains whether all the new additions to the Rangers can score enough goals on the powerplay to make up for what might be a much diminished penalty kill.

I suppose it makes life more interesting getting to know all the new boys, their styles of play, their personalities. I wonder if any other team has experienced such a total turnover of personal in the last four years. I remember being at the Nassau Mausoleum and phoning in the player numbers to the HockeyRodent so he could keep the fans informed about the 2005-2006 Rangers. Now, I’ll have to memorize a whole bunch of new numbers but this time I can text them to his Rodentness.

Let’s pretend today is the first day of the preseason. Who could we be seeing in September?

Ales Kotalik RW
Marian Gaborik RW
23 Chris Drury LW
Chris Higgins C
16 Sean Avery LW
Matthew Gilroy C
Donald Brashear LW
34 Aaron Voros LW
Artem Anisimov C
Nikolai Zherdev RW RFA*
29 Lauri Korpikoski LW RFA
17 Brandon Dubinsky C RFA
24 Ryan Callahan RW RFA*

6 Wade Redden D
3 Michal Rozsival D
5 Dan Girardi D
Bobby Sanguinetti D
Michael Sauer D
18 Marc Staal D

30 Lundqvist G
40 Valliquette G

Save for Chris Higgins, that’s a whole lot of right wings and centers and not many left wings. Dany Heatley is still out there but I doubt Sather has enough cap space to make that happen without unloading Rozsival and sacrificing youth. Sather has used restraint and held on to the youths. Let’s hope he can add more finesse to the top left and keep the kids, too.

Who knows how many more moves Sather will make before training camp opens?  At least it’s comforting to know that Sather isn’t in a river somewhere casting a line. He might finally be earning his keep.

The classic case in point was the Dave Schultz/Dale Rolfe “incident” back at the Spectrum during the 1974 Playoffs.  For those of you too young to remember, Dave “the Hammer” Schultz, one of the biggest goons and greatest enforcers of all time, beat the snot out of Dale Rolfe while the rest of Rolfe’s Ranger teammates watch Dale take the beat down.

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/1996/11/03/1996-11-03_beaten_rolfe_not_sore.html

It was one of the darkest and most embarrassing days in Ranger History. It cemented the idea,  for the next twenty years, that the Rangers were the pussiest team in the NHL. It signaled to other teams that they could run Ranger skill players at will. The Rangers notoriously would not stand up for each other. Until Messier, Kocur and Graves and the rest of what became the ‘94 Cup team came along, this indictment proved true.

After the gradual demise of the 94 team (the exit of  Messier to Vancouver), the mercenaries brought in by Sather failed to stand up for themselves, no less anyone else. The Rangers went seven season without making the playoffs. After the lockout, players like Kaparaitis and Strudwick brought a little heart and snarl back to the team. But, you didn’t see  any Ranger deliberately retaliate against goonery until Brendan Shanahan’s main bout at center ice with, of all people, Donald Brashear (who was then a Cap but once was a Philadelphia Flyer).

In a move that stunned and angered the fan base, Glen Sather sign a two year, $1.4  million dollar contract with free agent Donald Brashear on July 1. Fan favorite Colton Orr signed for four years with Toronto at $1 million per year.  How could Sather sign the player that hit Blair Betts during the playoff, breaking his orbital bone.

Brashear was suspended for 6 games and Betts was gone for the rest of the playoffs.  Why hire the biggest goon in hockey when we had a perfectly adequate enforcer in Orr?  Apparently, Orr did not inspire fear in Brashear, otherwise Brashear would have thought twice about running Betts. 

In today’s New York Post, Larry Brooks skewers Glen Sather and Ranger management over the recent acquisition of Donald Brashear.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07052009/sports/rangers/rangersbroke_bond_by_signing_thug_brash_177650.htm

RANGERS BROKE BOND BY SIGNING THUG BRASHEAR

“represents an indelible stain on the family concept preached by head coach John Tortorella. “

“Brashear is no better player than Colton Orr, the enforcer he replaces, despite the propaganda disseminated by the front office. He’s an oafish fourth-liner who will get approximately eight minutes a night and will be expected to inflict serious damage on the opposition. He’ll no doubt be suspended during the season. “

I don’t believe Larry Brooks doubts that Brashear will be just the deterrent the Rangers need to keep tough guys like Pronger (now a Flyer) from taking a run at their talent ( ie, the fragile Marian Gaborik). And, I don’t doubt “the Donald” might be suspended this coming season. I felt the same way about Tortorella when Sather hired him. Sure enough, it came to pass during the playoffs that Tortorella threw the bottle and got suspended. Larry, once again, needed to fill column inches and saw the signing of Brashear as a perfect opportunity to take shots at two people he dislikes,  Sather and Dolan.

To Larry Brooks and those angry Ranger Fans out there I ask, how was what Brashear did to Betts any worse then what Stevens did to Lindros or Kariya? I don’t know Steven’s personal story. Did he have as horrendous a childhood and upbringing as Brashear? Mark Messier wasn’t adverse to putting a well timed elbow into someones noggin. But, Stevens and Messier had skills. Brashear doesn’t. So I guess that made it okay

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050104147.html?sid=ST2009050104383

Brashear hits people and intimidates them. If you are going to try this man in the hockey court of public opiniion, how do Brashear’s offenses stack up against other perps (aforementioned or not)?  Has Brashear ever deliberately and with malice aforethought done to another player what a Bertuzzi or Simon did? Has he done to another player what McSorley did to Brashear himself?

Brashear throws high hits. He intimidates. So have lots of other players over the history of the NHL. But at some points in time, many fans would loved to have had a Stevens or a Bertuzzi or a Messier on their team.

Some Ranger fans are now indignant about Brashear. Other teams players and  fans may not like or respect Brashear but they’ll know when he’s out on the ice. Maybe, for once in a very long time, skill players on the Rangers can breathe a bit easier knowing that Brashear can checkmate other teams goons.

As for Dale Rolfe, the last paragraph of that linked article is very telling:

Rolfe said he has never had a conversation with Schultz in his life, except to say good luck during the handshake after the game. What would he do if he met Schultz now?

“I’d probably have a beer with him,” he said. Asked if there were any hard feelings, Rolfe said, “How could there be hard feelings? The man was doing his job. I was doing my job. It was a game.”

And so, as Dany Heatley jerked the chain of the Senators and the other teams that would take on his headache, Glen Sather needed to bust a move on a pure goal scorer. After all, there’s fly fishing to be done and the quicker the free agent signings go, the faster Sather can slither into his hip waders. But I digress.

So Sather makes the other Marian an offer he can’t refuse and, viola, a big part of Sather’s job is done. Like everything Sather does, this signing could be minimal reward and maximum risk. After all, Glen’s giving Gaborik $250,000 more per year for the next five years then was committed to Gomez. Where’s the money going to come from to get a first pair defenseman? And while the length of the contract is not unmanageable, Gaborik has proven so far to made of glass. Glen’s a gambler. 

Notwithstanding what could turn out, barring injury, to be a decent signing, Sather defies our imagination and probably makes his worst signing so far as the Rangers GM. What in God’s name is Sather thinking, letting Colton Orr go and signing the filthiest goon of all time, Donald Brashear? I know the Rangers need a new player rep for Ice Hockey In Harlem now that Gomez is gone but this is ridiculous. I honestly think the Brashear signing is worse then Redden. Brashear will take more stupid penalties then Ryan Hollweg with about the same offensive upside as Hollweg.

I understand that with Pronger now in Philadelphia all the Atlantic Division teams had to up their enforcer quotient. I would have rolled the dice with a fan favorite like Orr rather then the most despised goon in the league. I guess Sather really isn’t going to resign Blair Betts now. How could he after what Brashear did in the playoffs? Brashear is more hated then Bobby Clarke, Dave Schultz and Ken “the Rat” Linesmen were in their day (curiously all Flyers). Donald Brashear is unworthy to wear the Ranger uniform

Surely more shoes are going to drop  as Free Agent Frenzy continues. But, in signing Brashear, one has to think a shoe was dropped on Sather’s head. It’s always one step forward and two steps back with the Glen Sather Side Show.

I will be polling those who read this sight three times, today, after the draft and again on July15th. I think that would present a fair picture of how readers here are feeling about future of the Rangers and current subscriber’s commitment to the team and the organization.  

If you are a subscriber, please respond to the poll below based on your feelings at this time. I realize that the readership here is small but I value your opinions.

Quite amazingly, the Rangers earned a playoff spot with only two games left on their season. At that time, I predicted the Capitals would defeat the Rangers in five games. You could have knocked me over with a feather if you had told me then that the Rangers would take it to seven. Even more surprising was going up 3-1 in the series. But the final outcome shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

The same players who failed to show up and play with heart during the regular season reverted back to their true selves. As I predicted, John Tortorella would behave in some way that would bring controversy and ignominy down on this franchise. The only pleasant surprise is that Sean Avery came back  to provide the “Avery Effect”,  that is until he was benched by a man who has even less self-discipline then Avery.

So the Rangers are out of the playoffs and they have the large, unmovable contracts of their “veteran leaders”  to look forward to next season. The Rangers, by not making the second round, have  regressed. Hell, this team is worse off then in 2004. At least Sather was able to hold the Fire Sale that got us picks and prospects and hope for the future.

What hope for the future do we have now? If we can’t move deadbeats like Redden, Gomez, Naslund and Drury, we won’t be able to resign the kids we do want to keep because there’s no space under the salary cap. And, even if we manage to resign them, whose going to nuture the young talent and bring it along? John Tortorella? Jim Schoenfeld? The rebuild ended when Renney was shown the door on February 23. 

In the every cloud has a silver lining department, at least I don’t have to give Dolan anymore of my money for his overpriced playoff tickets. And, re-upping my subscription while Glen Sather is still GM of the Rangers is going to be a serious decision I’ll have to make come August. I am sure in this economy, many fans are in the same boat.

I can’t see anything happening in the off season to turn the switch back on.

I won’t bore you with the technical figure skating terms. Just suffice it to say that my positions were square and checked when I took off and landed my jumps. My spins were well centered and my edges were long and flowing.

How the  hell does all this relate to hockey and the tonight’s crucial game seven, you ask? Hear me out. Last Monday I turned up at my least favorite local rink, Dix Hills Park, to skate on the morning of Game 3. I got there and paid my $10. to skate on their crappy, blade killing ice.

I was just getting warmed up and Dan, the hockey coach, told me that two buses  full of school children would be arriving for an outing. The ice became cluttered with little bodies falling all over the ice. I skated for a half hour and left feeling unfulfilled and annoyed. It put me out of sorts for the rest of the day. It was like walking under a cloud. The Rangers lost Game 3

What a difference a week can make. Today I had my best day in a long time.  As I was getting off the ice, I thought back to last week and the negative way last Monday had started and finished. Today was so much different. I had a great morning. The ice at Superior Rink in Kings Park is always, um, superior and the weather was beautiful outside. This was a good omen.

As I was leaving the rink I said goodbye to my friends and proclaimed that I had had a great skate. Mark, ice maintainer extraordinaire and JV hockey coach at St. Anthony’s, said that my great skate might just be a good omen for the day and for the Rangers. He verbalized what I had been thinking.

Mark and his players are in the midst of a playoff battle with Sachem High School. His team lost 3-1 last night but they played well. They are in a best two out of three series. He told his players to be positive. They were in the game right to the end. They beat other good teams to get as far as they have.  He told them to look forward to the next game and stay positive.

After all that has happened in this series with the Washington Capitals, the Rangers need only win one more game. If good omens or karma have anything to do with it, the Rangers will win. After all, no Ranger has bitten any Cap or delivered a cheap, potentially career ending hit on any of the Capitals.

Washington is the team with the bad karma. The Rangers need to wipe the taint of Capitals and the last two games off them and play smart, puck possession hockey. They need to go back to their muscle memory and channel what Tom Renney taught them for 2/3 of the season.

They need to get their defensive game back and shut down the Caps because they can. They need to play boring, Tom Renney style, defensive hockey for just one more game. That and  Henrik Lundqvist needs to regain his kingly form and stop giving away the top of the net. 

Haven’t the Rangers been up and down all season, win two, lose one, win one, lose two. Well folks, the Rangers are due for a win and tonight has to be the night because there is no tomorrow.

Let’s Go Rangers

After another gutless, heartless uber-embarrassment by the New York Rangers tonight, there is one person out there for whom I truly feel sorry.  The person I feel badly for is my dear friend Scott  who, at no little expense, made the trip down to Washington to support his team. Too bad he showed up and the Rangers didn’t.

I do not feel badly for John Tortorella.  What in the hell was this man thinking about?  He scratched one of the few players on this team that always goes balls to the wall. Tortorella chose the worst possible time to make a point. His castigation of Avery played right into the Caps hand.  Avery gets regularly screwed by the officials. But today, he was royally screwed by his own coach.  

I do not feel badly for Sean Avery. He made his bed by taking stupid penalties on Wednesday night.  But, I don’t think those penalties warranted being scratched in the most important game of the playoffs. Would his presence in  the lineup have changed the outcome of this game?  Based on all the stats regarding the Avery Effect, I have to believe it would have.

If there was ever a more convincing argument for Scott Gomez to be gone at the end of the season, this game stands as a testament. He lost 66% of his face offs and he has been nothing more then a turnover machine during this whole series. When he  isn’t noticed for some boneheaded play, he is invisible.  The same  can be said for  Mara, Zherdev, Redden, Morris, Voros, and Roszival tonight. Drury is playing injured but he was -3 tonight. Minus 3.

My friend Scott is always telling me I gotta believe. After tonight, I wouldn’t blame him if he stopped believing so unfailingly. I think Scott needs a healthy infusion of skepticism and I’m just the person  to do it.

I’m tired of this team. I am tired of getting sucked in only to have my hopes dashed and suffer the unending embarrassment of being a Ranger fan. Tonight’s game once again makes the Rangers the laughing stock of the league and by association, their fans.

So to all who believe in this team and that they can get it done, I say to you and Scott that

After spending an entire season watching the ups and downs of the Rangers, I have become conditioned to the disappointment and failure that is commensurate with being a Ranger fan. I watched some players phone in games, play without heart and pass off the poor play with shoulder shrugs and feeble cliches. It all culminated in the firing of  Tom Renney over which I freely admit I’m still bitter. 

For a team that started the season off so well,  just a mere week ago many wondered if the Rangers would win a playoff spot, back into one or miss entirely. I see no reason why the fans shouldn’t be suspect of this team moving forward.  After all, it’s not that the team has been playing world beating hockey. They have just played that much better then their opponents, who have little playoff experience.

Yesterday the Rangers shut out the Washington Caps in a low scoring, boring game. If played mid season, such a game would have had some fans screaming that they were being bored. But the playoffs are about winning at any cost. Whatever it takes! Boredom be damned.

The fact that the Rangers have one of the top three goaltenders in the National Hockey League doesn’t hurt. John Tortorella is no dope. He realizes that the key to the Rangers getting through this series is to shut down the Caps offense by having his team play a sound, albeit boring, defensive game. The Rangers also had to depend upon their league leading penalty kill to win this game. I don’t suppose I need to remind anyone  who espoused and taught this team  that sometimes “defense first” win games.

I keep getting text messages from my friend Scott that I “gotta believe”. As I have said many time before on this blog, I love Scott’s positive attitude and his youthful exuberance. Last year he went to the final game in Pittsburgh and was on the bus until the final buzzer.

I know he’ll chastise me for being skeptical right now. Regardless of winning the first two games of this series on the road, the Rangers still have to convince me that they will do anything it takes to win. They have to bring the same level of commitment to the rest of the games in this series as they have to the first two.

I want to believe, I really do but the Rangers must continue to show me. I was born and raised in New York City but I must have lived in Missouri in a past life.

Rangers:

21 shots/17 missed shots/35 hits/5 giveaways/2 takeaways/21 blocked shots/20 faceoffs won/46 lost faceoffs

Caps:

35 shots/16 missed/27 hits/11 giveaways/7 takeways/10 blocked shots/46 faceoffs won/20 faceoffs lost.

The final score was 4-3 but only because Theodore was vulnerable and Lundqvist was kingly and kept the Rangers in the game in the first period, when they were completely outplayed by the Caps.

My stars of the game are Henrik Lundvist, Ryan Callahan and Blair Betts. They stopped the Caps offensive juggernaut by making saves, dishing and taking hits and killing penalties (sometimes without sticks).  Wade Redden was not as terrible as usual. Staal, Girardi, Mara, Roszival and Morris were superior to the Caps defensemen, even Green.

I don’t know if  Avery got under anyone’s skin but he certainly got under Green and sent him ass over tea kettle into the Ranger bench. Callahan put Ovechken on his kester at mid-ice. The way for the Rangers to get into the heads of the Caps is to continue to take the body. 

The only two Ranger players I had any big issue with was Gomez and of course, Naslund. Naslund is the new Captain Hook for the New York Rangers. He took three minor penalties and the Caps made him pay for the one legitimate call the refs made on him. Tortorella can’t sit him with Drury out . Despite his goal and assist tonight, I just wanted to strangle him.

Scott Gomez made yet another boneheaded giveaway pass that I thought for sure would have cost the Rangers a goal. And, while Dubinsky and Bett’s faceoff win percentage was slightly lower at 39%, Gomez needs to pick up his game on faceoffs especially if Drury is going to be out. Gomez had a key momentum shifting goal and two assists but his defensive play left a lot to be desired.

Lastly, the officiating was once again very tilted toward the Caps. Questionable calls on the Rangers and non-calls on the Caps, especially the Green boarding of Sjostrom. That’s a penalty on the Rangers if they did that to Semin. These Refs Suck! (just warming up for Monday).

They scored two powerplay goals and two more at even strength to beat the offensively dominant Caps and kept their defensive composure.

Feelin’ good now, yeah but I can’t explain…

Whether the Ranger’s faced Tim Thomas, the brick wall in Boston or the Ovechkin/Semin/Green firing squad in Washington, the odds of their weathering the first round rest squarely on the shoulders of the King, Henrik Lundqvist. With the scoring power of the aforementioned unholy triumvirate, poor Lundqvist will be flashing his glove in his nightmares until Wednesday.

Lundqvist has 37 wins, 25 losses, a 2.32 goals against average and a .916 save percentage. Theodore  has 32 wins, 16 loses and 5 overtime losses. His goals against average is 2.81 and save percentage is .901. While Lundqvist  may have slightly better numbers on the year, Theodore has had a better, higher scoring team in front of him.

In their four games with the Capitals this season the Rangers are 1 and 3. The Rangers lost both games in DC and two of the four game ended in shoot outs. The Rangers last defeated the Caps on February 11th in a shoot out 5-4. Unfortunately, there are no shoot outs in the playoffs. The Rangers all time away record against the Caps is 34-46-9-3.

Considering the Rangers have no powerplay, bad defense and have trouble scoring at the best of times, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the the odds are clearly against the Rangers making it through the first round.  Compound that by the fact that in Alexander Ovechkin the Caps have a superstar that not only can score but hit and fight if need be. Ovechkin is not the whining, diving Poster Boy the Rangers faced last season in Cindy Crosby. He’s the biggest superstar in the NHL. He’s the league MVP.

At least true hockey fans will be entertained by the antics of Ovechkin. Ranger fans should sit up and watch regardless of the outcome. Afterall, we’ll get to see a team the Rangers could have been. Had not Sather kept throwing money and big contracts at mediocre, washed up players since he arrived here, we too might have an Ovechkin We too might be in the Tavares sweepstakes like the Islanders.

I sincerely hope that Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers make it through the first round. But, like waiting for shoes to drop, I am not holding my breathe.