You want to know the sad truth...
I am tired of rambling or even thinking about the Rangers right now! I should have known when I was struggling to fight myself through writing those blog entries (those excessively long blog entries) a month back or so, that perhaps there wasn't even a point to devoting that much time to those details. I mean I still think there were some good points in there, but perhaps this season was just too long and too hard on all of us to even want to recapture that much of it. Best to try to enjoy the existing hockey as much as we possibly can and save the Rangers thoughts for another day. That has been my plan at least.
So, in the final installment of my season in review (aka rambling thoughts) we'll do the opposite.
I used to use this format when I was growing up and I'd sit down to write a Year in Review every New Year's Eve. (woah - self disclosure!!) Well before I grew up and had more important things to do with my time. Is that better? ;)
Anyway, let's have at it and let me wrap the 2008-2009 Rangers season up once and for all. You know. So I can move foward and ramble about other things. =)
The Good:
-The Rangers opening the season as well as they did was undeniably good. They set a franchise record for most points in their first 13 games with 21, when they opened up the 2008-2009 campaign going 10-2-1. That fast start and record, despite all that followed, cannot be taken away from them.
-The Rangers playing the two pre-season games in Bern and the first two regular season games in Prague was a good story. It was fun. Something different. Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch the Prague games live that weekend and had to watch them later, which took some of the mystique away from it. But the once in a lifetime type feel remained, even if the plethora of Czech players that would have made it all over the top amazing no longer were present come the start of season. And even though I sneakily watched and listened to the Bern games at work, I still loved it. The whole season felt so fresh and new, as it always does, and the Rangers had a magical glow about them, a glow that, as it turned out, never seemed to glow so bright away from European soil.
- The Rangers penalty kill. For years, and years and years and years, I said that if the Rangers were going to be so good at taking penalties, they should really learn to kill them off better. The last few years have been stepping stones to that goal and this year, they really, really impressed everyone. Many guys on the team deserve credit for being great PKers, or for working within the system of the PK, but probably none more than Blair Betts, Fredrik Sjostrom, and Hank Lundqvist. With these three, et al, the Rangers boasted the #1 or #2 ranked PK for most of the season, and ended up at #1 in the entire league, which, given the teams movement away from or lack of ever having a strong defensive core in my recent memory, I am not sure any of us would have ever believed it be possible.
-Sean Avery's return put a smile on my face. I'm not going to lie. Was it perfect? Was he perfect? No. But the idea that someone we thought was gone to another team for good, the idea he could come back was uplifting for me. On October 20th, Avery and the Stars came to New York and he said, maybe someday he'd be a Ranger again. I don't know if anyone knew - except Sean perhaps - that such a day would come less than five months later. Regardless, it's his spirit and his drive in the game that made me glad to have him back. I may not understand all he does or will do, but the guy is a very good hockey player and he tries harder and makes a bigger difference than many of his teammates. We've seen that, twice now. I hope against hopes that Sean is able to maintain a balance and remain an effective player for the Rangers going foward. Not everyone gets a second chance. Hopefully Sean will make the most of it.
The Bad:
-The system, or lack thereof, was bad. Not many would deny it was flawed. Sure, in the months since Renney’s departure that Februrary morning I’ve wondered was that really the best way. Was it really as flawed as I thought it was? But, you know, I still hold true that it was. Whatever Renney did to change a team from an exciting, fast, puck-possession squad to a team that put people to sleep on a nightly basis was a bad thing. This team may not have been perfect – goodness no – but I still refuse to believe that they would have done any worse had they been allowed to go forth and play to win, rather than play not to lose.
-I’ll call it the lack of the 60-minute effort, but it really came down to the lack of anything cohesive. I said it once earlier in the season, that if this group was cohesive in anything it was cohesive in not giving full efforts and looking utterly lifeless in doing so. As much as they had a great start and as much as Tortorella and Avery picked them up in the end, this season was chock full of half efforts. And that is really inexcusable. For the players themselves and for the coaches for letting it go on. (Few exceptions notwithstanding).
The Unforgivable:
- The Rangers had a lot of dismal moments on ice this year, but none was probably as consistently dismal as their powerplay, - their "$30 million" powerplay, as I liked to call them to start the year. I mistakenly - oh, oh, so mistakenly - assumed that the Rangers powerplay could not possibly be any worse than it was the past couple years. But boy, was I ever wrong! The powerplay failed to shine, yet again, and this time spent much of the season between 26th and 29th in the league, ending the season at the latter. It is interesting to note that the teams with the 29th and 30th ranked powerplay both made the playoffs - NY and Columbus. But even though it didn't kill this team, it did, in reality, handicap them beyond repair. Imagine, if you will, scoring even one powerplay goal per game, how many more games that may have gone in the Rangers favor. But the Rangers usually got a healthy enough number of chances and would sometimes go 0 for 8! You can't win hockey games doing that. If you are winning in spite of that horrific stat, you are very lucky. And, as we all saw, it can catch up with you in the end.
Again, the Rangers had a big scoring problem, period. But just because a team might not be the best at even strength, one would like to think they'd be a hair better with a man up, right? Well, no. Not in the Rangers case. The two worst parts of the powerplay beyond its own ineptitude was a) the failure of the coaches to change or fix any of it, all season long, continuing, instead, to roll out Redden, Rozsival, Drury, Gomez and Naslund for much of the year, despite seeing no viable growth in goal production and b) the team's ability to not only not score on their own powerplay, but give up way too many shorthanded goals to the other team. For a while, I thought the Rangers had the 1996 Avalanche's record beat. They fell short in the end, but the many games where they gave up not one but two shorthanded goals, even some 5 on 3 shorthanded goals, will not be forgotten.
-The constant issue of accountability from day one was unacceptable. To a certain degree, I can buy that Renney had to play who he had on this team. But, he, at times, failed to take into account that a) he was part of the managerial head that brought them here in the first place and b) that by being so loyal, he was destroying this team's chances, slim though they may be, of being more successful.
Players like Redden were dreadful 90% of the time. Not only were they never benched, not only for a period or a game, but they were given endless powerplay chances, a reward for most teams, or at least given to people who warrant being on it. Drury, Gomez, Rozsival, and co, all had more than their fair share of moments for deserving the bench, but yet they never saw it. And they continued to play top minutes.and underperformed. Over and over and over.
Meanwhile, guys like Dubinsky and Zherdev, for example, were not given such infinite patience. Renney had no problem benching them for making a bad play, skating too slow, or taking a bad penalty.
But Voros. No, his 3 penalties in one game were productive, because he'd learn from them.
And Nigel Dawes, remember, he was a playmaker.
Please.
No matter what anyone says, I still think it had a lot to do with favoritism, who a coach liked and didn't like. Ask Danny Fritsche. Ask Petr Prucha. And if there is anything that infuriates me, it's that. I only hope that with Tortorella at the helm for a full year he comes into training camp and lays into anyone who is not going to come ready to play. And if the season starts and there are players that don't have that attitude and conditioning, I hope he benches them, whoever they are.
- Now in going with the theme of unfair treatment, I'd be remiss in not mentioning, again, two of the worst cases that happened this year. Two guys who ironically share the same first name. Two guys named Petr.
I'll save everyone the chance of asking, seriously, she is still not over this, and I'll be short with what I am going to say. (There are many long summer days to ramble endlessly about what was and would not live to last here, so I'm sure there be other thoughts on this, especially the second player I’m about to mention.)
It all started in training camp, remember? The team was miserable, even then. No one looked put together. They won one game 2-1, on this continent, before going to Bern. The number one star of that game was Petr Nedved. One of the, if not the best player in training camp was Petr Nedved.
But no, Petr Nedved didn't get a spot o this team. Even though he looked to be one of the only guys that could score a goal.
And not because he was too old, which we might have understood, and not because they already had a plethora of centers, even though they did, and not because he wasn't good enough, because, face it, he was.
It was because he was Petr Nedved and not Blair Betts.
Beautiful example to set to start the year, no? Send the best player in trainiing camp home for no reason. At least he wanted to be here, wanted to play, and would have costed only about 6.5 million less than the rest of your top two centers.
Makes sense to me.
As for the other Petr, our favorite Petr, he is the ultimate example of unfair treatment.
The guy came into training camp the most in shape of anyone in anyone’s furthest memory of this team. He was in amazing shape. Everyone touted him for it.
Renney was quoted as saying that he'd be a big part of this team this year and get significant time to do so.
Which was a lie. Inevitably a lie, and from the beginning a lie.
Prucha's face may have remained in the opening segment to Rangers hockey on MSG until the day he left and Sean Avery returned, but let's be honest here. He was simply not going to be given the chance to be a Ranger here. Not anymore.
For Prucha stayed in the lockeroom more than he saw the ice. He often didn't get the chance to play and when he did he played with guys struggling worse than he was.
He didn't get the chance to play the powerplay, the one area the team desperately needed help on and an area that he could have helped them out with.
He didn't get the chance to play more than two games in a row, at many times, because he just couldn't "sustain."
And yet the guy had the same wonderful, patient and loyal attitude, each and every day, after weeks and months and even years of this same nonsense with this team. The same great attitude whether he played or not, sat or not. The true teammate in every sense of the word.
He loved his teammates. When asked to name his best friends in the league, his answer: all my teammates.
His teammates, loved him. Gomez was quoted as saying if you were a parent and you wanted your kid to be a hockey player with the right attitude, that's who they should look up to.
The coaches, the GM, whoever it was with this odd indifference to Prucha - they did not have such love for Petr.
Because he was Czech, because he lost confidence, because he was small? We'll probably never know.
Some speculated that Prucha was sitting in the fall because he was about to be traded and they didn't want him to get injured or lower his trade value. Which makes some level of sense. BUT...if that is the reason, you do not then go on record as saying that your player, the one whose value you need to be so high, was not able to play more than a few games in a row without slowing down. You do not say he is not a good playmaker. And you do not say he cannot sustain.
Unless you are just messing with his head. Or you just don't like him.
Look the guy maybe was never going to be as successful as he was that first year, that first glorious year, but they kind of went out of their way to guarantee that it never happened in New York, and on the Rangers.
And even if you didn't like him, although it is still hard to imagine anyone would dislike this young, hardworking kid, who always wore a smile and never complained, you didn't have to treat him like dirt. You could have been honest with him. Talked with him. And if you wanted to trade him, you should have just manned up and did it two years ago!
Regardless of the path here, I still believe Prucha can be a good player in this league. I was happily surprised to see that he was gaining his confidence back in Phoenix. As far as I'm concerned, it's the Rangers loss and the Coyotes gain. And as much as I love the Rangers, this is one case where I hope they see fit to regret it.
The Unforgettable/Good:
There were few unforgettable moments on the positive side here this season. I won't lie. The list, is indeed, very short.
- Opening Night at the Garden where Zherdev/Voros/Dubinsky gave us all an original sense of hope that the Rangers would be a fun, high scoring team.
- Zherdev's late game tying goal versus Pittsburgh on October 25th, which was one of the few times I thought they deserved to come back late and win. The Garden shook.
- Prucha's emotional game tying goal on December 3rd versus Pittsburgh, in his first game back after denying a Hartford conditioning assignment. The power went out. A fan favorite revived.
- February 3rd - Adam Graves Night - ceremony only!
- February 22nd - Andy Bathgate/Harry Howell Night - ceremony only!
- And lastly, for me, Prucha's last game as a Ranger - February 28th. On a night in which he scored a goal, the little "pepperpot" went to the defense of his teammate Dubinsky when the game against Colorado got one-sided and turned nasty. I'll never forget the way the Garden felt as I stared down at this little ball of fire, being pulled away, standing at center ice, before being escorted to the locker room. His final moment on Garden ice as a Ranger.
The Unforgettable/Bad:
The bad unforgettable stuff, there was seemingly more of.
The giving up five goals in five minutes to Montreal in November.
The Christmas Eve Eve Massacre to the Capitals.
The 10-2 loss in Dallas in February.
The lifeless performances on Jersey Retirement Nights.
-But rather than focus on those, there was really only one true unforgettable moment and it didn't even come in a New York Rangers game.
The news came on the day of October 13th, the news that Rangers draft pick and Russian star, Alexei Cherepanov, had died during a game. That day would be filled with uncertainty and doubt. The evening at the Garden a little somber. The days after, more disbelief and more sadness.
The Rangers, for their part, played what I thought was one of their better games of the season that night, perhaps in honor of this kid many of them had never met.
It still, almost 8 months later, does not quite seem real. It was, after all, more than just an event of a given day, a tragedy, but all that it meant for the future of the team. A guy we all imagined was going to play for our team, perhaps next year, wasn't going to be coming.
That was the surface reality, the tangible truth.
The rest of course, the truly emotional and meaningful reality, was that a young man was sadly taken from this Earth, a young man with talent and promise, who had people that loved him. He may have never ended up playing for our team, but he may have had the chance to live.
That reality is the one that is harder to forget.
Looking Ahead:
Ultimately though, so much of this season was very forgettable. I still hold true that this was the problem in the end with my trying to embrace this team.
Sure, 29 teams end up going home unhappy every year, because they did not win the ultimate prize. But, I'd like to think fans of more than just the one team that wins in the end had something to cheer about during the ride, some moments to look back on fondly once the season is over, or reasons to think positively going forward. Perhaps not every team, but some.
As Rangers fan, I'd argue, this year, we might not be among those some. I listed some great moments in there and some things to be proud of, but there were years of dismal hockey here - many years - where I felt better at the end about the group of guys that wore the sweater and had games and players I knew I'd remember forever.
Look, no one is trying to lie to themselves here. In some ways the Rangers, given their mediocre, over-paid parts, actually overacheived. In some ways, however, they weren't allowed to play to their full capabilities. Imagine the team that played in Prague, with those same mediocre, over-paid parts, but with that go-go-go attitude was allowed to play the whole season (or chose to) and I think we'd have had a better, more entertaining team. Perfect? Not even close. But better. I refuse to believe that if they weren't allowed freedom to skate more openly that they wouldn't have accidentally scored more goals and not needed to depend on winning 2-1 games. In some ways I undertand why Renney did it, but I still don't agree with it.
And as for the looking towards next season part, the Rangers management has pretty much killed all hope in this direction either. Their hefty contacts to the big three, and more, prevent this team from actually addressing any of their tangible problems. They went into last season needing a powerplay quarterback, a stay at home defensemen, and a real and true goal scorer. They got not one of these things last Free Agent Frenzy Day and, given the follies of the once great Glen Sather, they have no salary cap room to find these things now.
So, instead, we as fans must hope that our youth, whatever be waiting in the wings, gets the chance to play and shine in order for this team to succeed. An idea we've been waiting to see happen for the last decade. Patiently waiting.
And we, as Rangers fans, must pray, silently or aloud, that there can be no more stupidity left come the big two days of summer - Draft Day and Free Agent Frenzy Day.
But we, as Rangers fans, we know enough to not hope for too much.
**Author's note: I'm finally done, I'm finally posting. I apologize for the length of this - but again, if you are coming here, you know better - and for the amount of time it took to finally put together the pieces. Very, very busy lately. But you know, I feel good getting this out here, so I can hopefully move on to other things hockey related.
And as for this review being, at times, a little harsh, I can't apologize for that. I love the Rangers but this was, in many ways, one of the most disappointing seasons of Rangers hockey I can remember. And not because my favorite player got traded, not because they got knocked out in the first round, not because of anything like that. But because, more times than not, it didn't feel like they were truly trying, and I don't love most of these players enough to forgive them for that.**
Showing posts with label 2008-2009 Season in Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008-2009 Season in Review. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Rangers Season in Review/Part Three: Personality Plus. . .
When the season first began, and certainly as it went along, I found myself asking a question I cannot remember asking myself in all the years I watched Rangers hockey.
That question:
Do I really even like this team?
Or, more specifically, do I really feel a connection to these players?
It's been mentioned by many this entire year. This Rangers team - and not just the Redden/Gomez/Drury triad I previously tore apart verbally - was just not very likable or enjoyable to watch.
Likeable, enjoyable, you may ask - does that really matter?
My answer - HELL yes!
Why?
Because even when this team was winning back in October, I wasn't embracing them like I usually did.
And even when this team was self-combusting in February, I wasn't torn apart about it like I usually would be.
In both cases it was one of two things or both wrapped up together that caused such emotion, or lack of emotion, in me: the lack of personality of the players and the lack of personality of the product on the ice.
The Players:
These, to be quick about it, are not your fathers NY Rangers. These, to be outright blunt, are not even the NY Rangers of my own youth.
To start, only a handful of them, at best, really seem to embrace the idea of Be{ing} a Ranger!
In those precious few, you see immediately that they truly get it. They understand the meaning of playing for this team and love the pressure and challenge of playing in one of the worlds great cities.
Those are also the guys, if you'll notice, that made promises to themselves and the fans to start the season. A promise to be committed and to play each game with the same enthusiasm and committment. Now I think I'd admit that the promises you make to yourself are great but its the promises you make outloud that really put yourself on the line.
A perfect example of this is Marc Staal.
Staal was quoted in Prague saying he had worked on his hitting in the off season and that was one area of the game he was looking to improve from his first to second season.
And, what, may I ask was the one thing many noticed about young #18 this year besides his overall growth and poise with the puck? He took the body each and every game. He hit consistently and because he's 6'4", he hit with his body behind it and he knocked guys over. He did his job. Everyone embraced his effort.
Staal was not alone. Callahan obviously made promises to himself and the fans. To play hard every night and never stop giving 110 percent. That's why he was the Steven Mcdonald Award winner. That's why the fans loved him. Few things gave me such pleasure this year as seeing Cally run around hitting everyone in sight.
Lundqvist, even when he didn't play his best, still committed himself to this team. I don't think there is a person that cares more about how he personally performs and how the team does. We saw him start to lose patience with the 2-1 system, but the guy continued to give, and give, and give. However, as we saw, Hank could only do so much. He needed, too often, to be perfect, but he could not make up for the lack of scoring. And yet, his professionalism never wavered.
Avery, like him or hate him, came back to this team at trade deadline. He wasn't perfect, but I think we'd all be hard pressed to find an example, besides any of the above, of a guy that worked harder, skated harder, or wanted more to make this thing work. Avery wasn't here the whole year, but he provided a very big shot of life to a team in desperate need of all he offered.
Now that we've covered the good, - well, there was everyone else. The others that just did not have the same level of committment. I won't name them, because its really unnecessary to do so. All you really have to know is that those I've just written about were, arguably, the only four players that brought it each and every game.
Now Staal had a small handful of bad games. Hank had a few more than Staal. Avery had a few as well. I'd actually argue that Callahan may not have a bad game all year.
Regardless of good versus bad, they all came to play hockey, each and every night, with the interest of winning the game and taking one for the team.
By default everyone else will pale in comparison. And many will completely fade off the map.
Look, I wanted this team to do well - whether I expected them to or not- but it is very hard to like a team when it appears so few of the them are really trying. Or that so few of them seem to care if they are trying or not.
That is something I struggled with all year. And that is something we'll all struggle with as long as the team stays the way it is.
Personality:
The Rangers went from being a team with many strong personalities to being a team severly lacking them. No one can ever truly replace the league's true great personalities like Jaromir Jagr. Or the wise personalities of those like Brendan Shanahan. They are simply in a class by themselves.
But it is almost unbelievable that so many stale personalities end up on the same team, unless of course it was by design.
What I say next is not meant to be a personal indictment of any of these players. As they have given us so little of themselves, I truly know nothing about their personalities off the ice and away from the team, or in the room where none of us are privy to see.
That being said, some of them have it and some of them don't. And by "it" I mean personality, something special that sets them apart from the rest of the nameless/faceless players that play in this league.
Have It:
Mara has probably the best personality on the team. He showed it and it suited him. Listen to those games he was mic'd up. I mean not only were those segments some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen, but they show how his personality helps the team.
"That a boy, Raymond James."
"Nazzy, where's my hug?"
"Sick pass!"
"Carpool!"
(Although I'd be much obliged to anyone that can explain "carpool" to me) =)
Avery, who I'll discuss more some day this summer when we're all bored, has a personality. Hell he is personality. Like he said, even half Sean Avery is still not so mild.
Hank has a charismatic personality. Sure, he's not Tim Thomas in terms of open book, laughter and chatting on gamedays. But he'll smile at the camera and engage the listener, with honesty and thoughtfulness (not kindness, thoughtfulness).
Valiquette has a noble eloquence and a good sense of humor.
Gomez, when kept in check and perhaps in small doses, has a great personality.
Nik Antropov actually has a very good personality. I saw an interview with him on NHL Live that I suggest you watch if you can find. (Although this is a funny one too). And, truth be told, even though he arrived late in the year, he quickly became one of the few players I'd look forward to hearing from post or in-game.
We might not have gotten to see enough of it, thanks to dozens of previously discussed and yet to be discussed reasons, but Petr Prucha had a fun-loving personality and a likeability his teammates and the fans couldn't help but respond to. His smile simply could not be contained. The response of everyone to him - teammates and fans - showed the charisma that he undeniably had and that we were all unfortunately deprived of enjoying more of.
Middle of the Road:
I'm not sure whether Callahan has as engaging a personality as the rest, but lucky for him and for us, it doesn't matter that he does or not. His ON ICE personality more than makes up for any other aspect he lacks. And truth be told, he does not lack as much as his teammates. I can see him, if he allowed himself to be, opening up and being more engaging with people. And, honestly, in comparison to others, he does give a pretty nice mid-game interview.
Staal and Korpokoski, although we don't see enough, appear to have similar dry senses of humor. Staal, particularly, reminds me of a Robin Ventura type, cool and calm, but funny in a thoughtful way. I wish we'd hear more from them so we can tell for sure.
I think Colton Orr smiling after he beats the crap out of somebody, is funny. It shows he does have personality. And it reminds me of PJ Stock, which is never a bad thing.
Dubinsky is here, merely because I do not know what he has - yet. He has shown glimpses of being funny at times. And at others he's giving the same boring speech as everyone else. I reserve the right to hold judgement on him.
Don't Have It:
I like and respect Markus Naslund because I truly believe he had a great career and was a well respected player in this league. And he gave truthful, honest, and solemn post-game interviews. But he was not a sparkling personality. He reminds me, at times, of Martin Straka, not in talent, but in personality. You understood he cared, and you appreciated what he was saying, but there wasn't much dazzle at all.
In the same vein as Naslund, I place Fredrik Sjostrom. I think, honestly, it's the solemn poise and stoicism of the Swedish players, of which there are a few exceptions I'm sure. I always liked Freddie Shoes, even when he was with Phoenix, but he, like Naslund, will not dazzle with personality. At least not to us. We like him because he tries hard and he's good at his job, but not because we're engaged by him.
Blair Betts might just be tied, in my mind, for the most boring guy on the team, next to the quiet Captain. You notice when he was mic'd up twice this year that they always ended up showing just one segment, right? It wasn't an accident. There just wasn't anything left to show. Valuable as hell to this team and underappreciated by everyone, myself included, but he is just not an engaging personality.
The Captain Chris Drury wins my award for worst interview ever. Ever! I'd take an interview from Vladimir Malakhov over a Drury interview, and that's just hard to believe. Why? Because Malakhov has an excuse, still, years, later, with being Russian and harder to understand. But Drury? There is really no excuse for him being so boring, so soft-spoken, so mumbling. This is actually painful for me to type. I do appreciate the guy. I do, because I think he's a fine human being. . .but again, he's not a great captain and he's definitely one of the absolute worst public speakers. Again, ever!
Trading Derek Morris for Nigel Dawes was like trading the same personality to me. I couldn't tell the difference.
Zherdev, Rozsival, and Kalinin never gave us enough, or had nothing to give - perhaps we'll never know. Maybe it does have something to do with the European factor. I mean Rozsival has been here four years, but I don't think I heard the other two speak more than once each!
Girardi might have a personality but we haven't really gotten a chance to see it.
Voros might have had a personality, but he, perhaps like others, lost it somewhere before Thanksgiving.
Redden. I'm not even going to bother with this one. Redden is a polite country farm boy that plays hockey in Manhattan. A personality clash if you've ever seen one.
What does this all mean? It means different things to different people, I guess. I know some fans like whatever guy is wearing "the uniform" and doesn't care whether he can differentiate one from the other.
If that's the case, these were YOUR New York Rangers.
I openly admit, I love to love the players and if I become attached to a player, it is something I do so very completely, as you may have guessed.
Now, my favorite New York Rangers in the past have fallen into one of two categories - players that I loved for their talent and players that I loved for who they were.
Who they were could mean the way they carried themselves, their grace, their passion for the game. Their personality. Their extra something special that set them apart from everyone else.
I love the Rangers "team" regardless of who is on it, but that doesn't mean I have to love and embrace every single player on that team. And this team, for the first time in a long time, made me realize that truth.
I respected Naslund. I respected what many other of the stoic players like Betts and Sjostrom did.
I didn't appreciate some other players at all because they gave me very little reason to: either with their lack of effort on the ice or with their indifference or lack of defining personality off of it.
But I did embrace a handful of guys, a small handful. Staal, for his talent and the promise of a guy that can have it all. Callahan, for his drive and undying dedication. Hank and Vali for their committment to the game and thoughtful exploration outside of it. Avery for his character. And Prucha for his heart.
If we're tearing down all walls here and being honest, those were my favorite players on the team this year and have always been among my favorites during their times on this team. Those were the guys I embraced. Those were the guys I was happy to see do well. Those were, also, the guys that so often did well.
I don't think that's a coincidence either. And not because I sat here and picked my favorites because they were the best, but because I probably was drawn to them because they worked so hard.
Now, granted, they perhaps were the ones that stood out because next to everyone else they just shone that much brighter. That may very well be true.
But I loved them because they gave something more - if not in talent, then in effort. If not in points, then in heart.
As much as I love and embrace those players and understand why I do, I still wonder why it is only the precious few that seem to put everything together here.
Why do they come with that drive, that distinct essense of wanting it more and not settling for giving less than one hundred percent?
Perhaps it is the knowledge of how the fans embrace their heroes, those great players who have been here before and left a tangible piece of themselves behind.
Perhaps it is that that inspires them, these few among so many others - the possibility, no matter how remote, of being one of those rare players that is remembered here, long after their career is over.
Of being one of those special players that is still thought about, decades after the've last skated on Garden ice.
That question:
Do I really even like this team?
Or, more specifically, do I really feel a connection to these players?
It's been mentioned by many this entire year. This Rangers team - and not just the Redden/Gomez/Drury triad I previously tore apart verbally - was just not very likable or enjoyable to watch.
Likeable, enjoyable, you may ask - does that really matter?
My answer - HELL yes!
Why?
Because even when this team was winning back in October, I wasn't embracing them like I usually did.
And even when this team was self-combusting in February, I wasn't torn apart about it like I usually would be.
In both cases it was one of two things or both wrapped up together that caused such emotion, or lack of emotion, in me: the lack of personality of the players and the lack of personality of the product on the ice.
The Players:
These, to be quick about it, are not your fathers NY Rangers. These, to be outright blunt, are not even the NY Rangers of my own youth.
To start, only a handful of them, at best, really seem to embrace the idea of Be{ing} a Ranger!
In those precious few, you see immediately that they truly get it. They understand the meaning of playing for this team and love the pressure and challenge of playing in one of the worlds great cities.
Those are also the guys, if you'll notice, that made promises to themselves and the fans to start the season. A promise to be committed and to play each game with the same enthusiasm and committment. Now I think I'd admit that the promises you make to yourself are great but its the promises you make outloud that really put yourself on the line.
A perfect example of this is Marc Staal.
Staal was quoted in Prague saying he had worked on his hitting in the off season and that was one area of the game he was looking to improve from his first to second season.
And, what, may I ask was the one thing many noticed about young #18 this year besides his overall growth and poise with the puck? He took the body each and every game. He hit consistently and because he's 6'4", he hit with his body behind it and he knocked guys over. He did his job. Everyone embraced his effort.
Staal was not alone. Callahan obviously made promises to himself and the fans. To play hard every night and never stop giving 110 percent. That's why he was the Steven Mcdonald Award winner. That's why the fans loved him. Few things gave me such pleasure this year as seeing Cally run around hitting everyone in sight.
Lundqvist, even when he didn't play his best, still committed himself to this team. I don't think there is a person that cares more about how he personally performs and how the team does. We saw him start to lose patience with the 2-1 system, but the guy continued to give, and give, and give. However, as we saw, Hank could only do so much. He needed, too often, to be perfect, but he could not make up for the lack of scoring. And yet, his professionalism never wavered.
Avery, like him or hate him, came back to this team at trade deadline. He wasn't perfect, but I think we'd all be hard pressed to find an example, besides any of the above, of a guy that worked harder, skated harder, or wanted more to make this thing work. Avery wasn't here the whole year, but he provided a very big shot of life to a team in desperate need of all he offered.
Now that we've covered the good, - well, there was everyone else. The others that just did not have the same level of committment. I won't name them, because its really unnecessary to do so. All you really have to know is that those I've just written about were, arguably, the only four players that brought it each and every game.
Now Staal had a small handful of bad games. Hank had a few more than Staal. Avery had a few as well. I'd actually argue that Callahan may not have a bad game all year.
Regardless of good versus bad, they all came to play hockey, each and every night, with the interest of winning the game and taking one for the team.
By default everyone else will pale in comparison. And many will completely fade off the map.
Look, I wanted this team to do well - whether I expected them to or not- but it is very hard to like a team when it appears so few of the them are really trying. Or that so few of them seem to care if they are trying or not.
That is something I struggled with all year. And that is something we'll all struggle with as long as the team stays the way it is.
Personality:
The Rangers went from being a team with many strong personalities to being a team severly lacking them. No one can ever truly replace the league's true great personalities like Jaromir Jagr. Or the wise personalities of those like Brendan Shanahan. They are simply in a class by themselves.
But it is almost unbelievable that so many stale personalities end up on the same team, unless of course it was by design.
What I say next is not meant to be a personal indictment of any of these players. As they have given us so little of themselves, I truly know nothing about their personalities off the ice and away from the team, or in the room where none of us are privy to see.
That being said, some of them have it and some of them don't. And by "it" I mean personality, something special that sets them apart from the rest of the nameless/faceless players that play in this league.
Have It:
Mara has probably the best personality on the team. He showed it and it suited him. Listen to those games he was mic'd up. I mean not only were those segments some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen, but they show how his personality helps the team.
"That a boy, Raymond James."
"Nazzy, where's my hug?"
"Sick pass!"
"Carpool!"
(Although I'd be much obliged to anyone that can explain "carpool" to me) =)
Avery, who I'll discuss more some day this summer when we're all bored, has a personality. Hell he is personality. Like he said, even half Sean Avery is still not so mild.
Hank has a charismatic personality. Sure, he's not Tim Thomas in terms of open book, laughter and chatting on gamedays. But he'll smile at the camera and engage the listener, with honesty and thoughtfulness (not kindness, thoughtfulness).
Valiquette has a noble eloquence and a good sense of humor.
Gomez, when kept in check and perhaps in small doses, has a great personality.
Nik Antropov actually has a very good personality. I saw an interview with him on NHL Live that I suggest you watch if you can find. (Although this is a funny one too). And, truth be told, even though he arrived late in the year, he quickly became one of the few players I'd look forward to hearing from post or in-game.
We might not have gotten to see enough of it, thanks to dozens of previously discussed and yet to be discussed reasons, but Petr Prucha had a fun-loving personality and a likeability his teammates and the fans couldn't help but respond to. His smile simply could not be contained. The response of everyone to him - teammates and fans - showed the charisma that he undeniably had and that we were all unfortunately deprived of enjoying more of.
Middle of the Road:
I'm not sure whether Callahan has as engaging a personality as the rest, but lucky for him and for us, it doesn't matter that he does or not. His ON ICE personality more than makes up for any other aspect he lacks. And truth be told, he does not lack as much as his teammates. I can see him, if he allowed himself to be, opening up and being more engaging with people. And, honestly, in comparison to others, he does give a pretty nice mid-game interview.
Staal and Korpokoski, although we don't see enough, appear to have similar dry senses of humor. Staal, particularly, reminds me of a Robin Ventura type, cool and calm, but funny in a thoughtful way. I wish we'd hear more from them so we can tell for sure.
I think Colton Orr smiling after he beats the crap out of somebody, is funny. It shows he does have personality. And it reminds me of PJ Stock, which is never a bad thing.
Dubinsky is here, merely because I do not know what he has - yet. He has shown glimpses of being funny at times. And at others he's giving the same boring speech as everyone else. I reserve the right to hold judgement on him.
Don't Have It:
I like and respect Markus Naslund because I truly believe he had a great career and was a well respected player in this league. And he gave truthful, honest, and solemn post-game interviews. But he was not a sparkling personality. He reminds me, at times, of Martin Straka, not in talent, but in personality. You understood he cared, and you appreciated what he was saying, but there wasn't much dazzle at all.
In the same vein as Naslund, I place Fredrik Sjostrom. I think, honestly, it's the solemn poise and stoicism of the Swedish players, of which there are a few exceptions I'm sure. I always liked Freddie Shoes, even when he was with Phoenix, but he, like Naslund, will not dazzle with personality. At least not to us. We like him because he tries hard and he's good at his job, but not because we're engaged by him.
Blair Betts might just be tied, in my mind, for the most boring guy on the team, next to the quiet Captain. You notice when he was mic'd up twice this year that they always ended up showing just one segment, right? It wasn't an accident. There just wasn't anything left to show. Valuable as hell to this team and underappreciated by everyone, myself included, but he is just not an engaging personality.
The Captain Chris Drury wins my award for worst interview ever. Ever! I'd take an interview from Vladimir Malakhov over a Drury interview, and that's just hard to believe. Why? Because Malakhov has an excuse, still, years, later, with being Russian and harder to understand. But Drury? There is really no excuse for him being so boring, so soft-spoken, so mumbling. This is actually painful for me to type. I do appreciate the guy. I do, because I think he's a fine human being. . .but again, he's not a great captain and he's definitely one of the absolute worst public speakers. Again, ever!
Trading Derek Morris for Nigel Dawes was like trading the same personality to me. I couldn't tell the difference.
Zherdev, Rozsival, and Kalinin never gave us enough, or had nothing to give - perhaps we'll never know. Maybe it does have something to do with the European factor. I mean Rozsival has been here four years, but I don't think I heard the other two speak more than once each!
Girardi might have a personality but we haven't really gotten a chance to see it.
Voros might have had a personality, but he, perhaps like others, lost it somewhere before Thanksgiving.
Redden. I'm not even going to bother with this one. Redden is a polite country farm boy that plays hockey in Manhattan. A personality clash if you've ever seen one.
What does this all mean? It means different things to different people, I guess. I know some fans like whatever guy is wearing "the uniform" and doesn't care whether he can differentiate one from the other.
If that's the case, these were YOUR New York Rangers.
I openly admit, I love to love the players and if I become attached to a player, it is something I do so very completely, as you may have guessed.
Now, my favorite New York Rangers in the past have fallen into one of two categories - players that I loved for their talent and players that I loved for who they were.
Who they were could mean the way they carried themselves, their grace, their passion for the game. Their personality. Their extra something special that set them apart from everyone else.
I love the Rangers "team" regardless of who is on it, but that doesn't mean I have to love and embrace every single player on that team. And this team, for the first time in a long time, made me realize that truth.
I respected Naslund. I respected what many other of the stoic players like Betts and Sjostrom did.
I didn't appreciate some other players at all because they gave me very little reason to: either with their lack of effort on the ice or with their indifference or lack of defining personality off of it.
But I did embrace a handful of guys, a small handful. Staal, for his talent and the promise of a guy that can have it all. Callahan, for his drive and undying dedication. Hank and Vali for their committment to the game and thoughtful exploration outside of it. Avery for his character. And Prucha for his heart.
If we're tearing down all walls here and being honest, those were my favorite players on the team this year and have always been among my favorites during their times on this team. Those were the guys I embraced. Those were the guys I was happy to see do well. Those were, also, the guys that so often did well.
I don't think that's a coincidence either. And not because I sat here and picked my favorites because they were the best, but because I probably was drawn to them because they worked so hard.
Now, granted, they perhaps were the ones that stood out because next to everyone else they just shone that much brighter. That may very well be true.
But I loved them because they gave something more - if not in talent, then in effort. If not in points, then in heart.
As much as I love and embrace those players and understand why I do, I still wonder why it is only the precious few that seem to put everything together here.
Why do they come with that drive, that distinct essense of wanting it more and not settling for giving less than one hundred percent?
Perhaps it is the knowledge of how the fans embrace their heroes, those great players who have been here before and left a tangible piece of themselves behind.
Perhaps it is that that inspires them, these few among so many others - the possibility, no matter how remote, of being one of those rare players that is remembered here, long after their career is over.
Of being one of those special players that is still thought about, decades after the've last skated on Garden ice.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Rangers Season In Review/Part Two: The Question of Captaincy and Leadership. . .
While I don't think these things - captaincy and leadership - doomed the hockey club as much as the so many mediocre players being paid as superstars payroll snafu, I do think it would be wrong to not believe this played a role in some way.
How significant a role? It may be impossible to ever tell.
The Quiet Captain:
As the team got set to begin their season in Prague with their plethora of Czech players on their roster - *ahem, little sarcasm there* - Tom Renney was carefully selecting his choice for captain of the New York Rangers.
Whether he put a lot of thought into this decision or none at all, we'll never know, but he settled on the guy known as Mr. Clutch, Chris Drury.
I have nothing personally against Drury; I have found him in every instance I've seen him to be a polite and kind human being. In fact, The Hockey Rodent said it best when he said he'd "'like' to like" Chris Drury. But...
I never, not for one second, thought he was the right person to be a captain here. Not at all.
Personally, I would not have named a captain so soon. And was pretty upset they chose to do so. When you have arguably the greatest European scorer in the history of the game who has set numerous team records and carried, at many times, the entire Rangers team on his own shoulders leave, and leave under the not so best of circumstances, to me the worst thing you can try to do is try to immediately replace someone of that stature.
Because you will inevitably fail. Whoever it is will never live up to what you need him to be.
My vote would have been for no captain at all. Instead name three alternate captains perhaps based on seniority with the team, or seniority in the league, and let a true captain step up during the season. Let the day in, day out routine of playing in this league and in this city name the captain for you.
But, no. Tom Renney chose to name Chris Drury as captain. Because, presumably,
Drury loved NY, because he wanted to Be a Ranger!, because he was a rotating captain on a successful team in Buffalo, and because he was a winner.
Or, in my opinion which I stated here this season, I think on some level, Tom Renney named Chris Drury captain because he was the most easy-going, and would never say anything but what the media and the brass wanted to hear in the most boring and monotonous way possible - after every single game.
And he lived up to that perfectly.
As for the rest of our expectations, he came up short.
I have my own favorite captains, both on the Rangers and in the NHL. Obviously I loved Mark Messier and think he was always a remarkable captain. He did everything.
My current favorite NHL captain, Jarome Iginla, kind of fits into that mold. He scores points and is, on many nights, the best player on his team. He is supportive of his teammates and will drop the gloves to settle something. He's eloquent and a respected presence in the league, respected by teammates, opponents and those that cover the game. He's the "do-everything" poster boy.
Shane Doan is a close second for me (and yes, it was before this year's trade deadline). He is a very talented player - very underrated in fact. He's humble. He's eloquent. And he's got a great sense of humor. If I were a player, I'd love to have a captain that would be able to keep me loose and laughing when I was uptight or give me a a speech to get me pumped up when I needed that - and most importantly, to know when each situation was necessary. He's a prideful guy, and a guy that wants to succeed. He knows how to work with everyone - veterans, rookies, coaches. Canada has many of the best hockey players in the world and when it comes time to name their captain for their international teams, Doan is always right there. I find that very, very telling in terms of his character.
Chris Drury, on the other hand, does not seem to inspire the same reaction in me, or his teammates. I think he threw one shove this year, maybe accidentally. He showed emotion four times, perhaps. I alluded to it during the season. Once after scoring the goal against the MM squad in Bern. Twice when he was angry he didn't score and a) threw his stick and b) smacked his stick on the boards nearly decapitating Steve Valiquette. And once again, when he scored his "clutch" goal in the playoffs.
As for inspiring in general, the Rangers team didn't seem inspired. Now whether or not that all had to do with the captain remains to be known, but I am of the opinion that it wouldn't have hurt if he had been more vocal.
I mean, seriously, there were so many spans of time his play was dismal, he appeared absent, and I'd swear I had yet to see him have a pulse, whether on the ice or in the post-game interview. I may expect that from a bunch of the non-factors on my team, but the captain?
That can't happen.
A captain, to me, is the right guy if he is that guy that can inspire - inspire others to play better, inspire them to love the game, inspire - anything.
Look the Rangers were blessed to have Mark Messier, the best leader in sports, and one of the greatest captains.
In between Messier's two runs, my favorite player Brian Leetch became captain. Favorite or not, I did not think Leetch was a good captain. That may have been because he loathed the fact Mark was no longer around or maybe he just wasn't able to translate his knowledge of the game to others.
The big difference though was that Brian Leetch was the best player on the team. He was the best player on a team that also had Wayne Gretzky. Leetch had no apologizing to do if he wasn't the perfect captain, because he was always the team's best player.
Drury, gosh forgive him, was not the team's best player. We can't even make a fraction of an argument for him in this case.
See you can get away with being a captain even if you aren't typical captain material if you are the best player on the team. Also true to note that you can be a leader without being a captain, but it is pretty hard to be a captain without first knowing how to lead others.
Now, all that very much aside, I do believe, pretty strongly in fact, that Drury did care very much for this team and his teammates and desire to do well. Perhaps too well. You know how Tom Renney's greatest folly in the end was his loyalty to his players, something we'd normally admire.
Well, Chris Drury's greatest downfall, perhaps, is in caring too much. And not knowing how to focus that emotion.
Instead of seeing a guy that is firing on all cylinders and go-go-go on the ice, we see a guy that was often playing timid, nervous hockey, which is no fun for us to watch and not at all effective.
I didn't necessarily come up with this theory alone. His teammates praise the heck of Chris. Renney and Torts both alluded to how much Chris cared.
So, I decided, perhaps it's not a lack of caring. It probably isn't. But more likely, it's a lack of translating that caring into something that works.
Drury made a bunch of people, myself included, very unhappy with his "won't let this ruin my Christmas" quote after the Christmas Eve-Eve massacre loss to the Capitals last December. Now, I don't really believe that Drury didn't care, or that he wasn't embarassed by the loss, BUT...to say what he said gives the opposite impression. And that is not a good thing.
As fans, I think we expect to hear some more honesty. Some more truth. Some more passion! Some more pulse! Some more anger! Some more - anything, for goodness sakes!
The utter lack of that, in addition to all else, compounded why Drury's leadership style, whatever it may be, just does not translate in New York.
And that is why he being captain was never going to work. A very nice guy, decent hockey player at times, but just not a good captain.
Leadership:
Chris Drury aside for a moment, this team, on a whole, lacked a leadership figure or figures for the young kids to latch onto. Believe it or not, this is a big problem.
I'd like to borrow some thoughts from PJ Stock to hilight this. In the weeks following the Canadiens demise, PJ talked about how when he was in NY and he wasn't doing the right thing, he always had an assistant coach telling him who to look up to.
He was told to look up to Adam Graves, Brian Leetch, Mike Richter. See how they practice. See how they approach the game. See how they work.
And PJ did. And goodness knows PJ had three amazing examples of great people and great hockey players right there. He, he was lucky.
PJ pondered just who the young Canadiens had to show them "the way."
He said in Pittsburgh, guess who sits next to Sidney Crosby. After the trade from the Isles, it's been Bill Guerin.
Guess who sat next to Drew Doughty all season in Los Angeles, he asked. Sean O'Donnell, the veteran.
He wondered who the young Canadiens, namely Carey Price and the Kostitsyns, who they had showing them what to do, telling them what not to do.
He feared they had no one.
I do not for a second think the situation is the same in New York as it is in Montreal, although there are some similarities, surely. And I think the young Rangers - especially the young Rangers - are miles beyond in maturity than many others may be. I think in that way we are blessed. Marc Staal, Lauri Korpikoski - they are 22-years-old! The great majority of the team is 24 or younger. They may be young but they do not strike me as needing people to show them how to act professionally.
HOWEVER. That does not mean that they did not lack for leadership ON the ice.
Tom Renney might not have said all the right things when he was here, but after he left he gave an interview in the NY Post where he got something very right. He said, "
I'm not knocking #23 and #19 (well more than I already have), but there is no way - no freakin' way - that the young guys, after playing next to guys like Jagr, Shanahan, and Straka, didn't feel a little lost looking at the quiet-man Drury and jokester Gomez.
That's just a fact. Did they need Gomez and Drury to show them how not to end up tied in controversy outside the hockey arena? - no. But they perhaps needed them to show a consistent example of putting in effort on the ice.
I am being brutally honest here, but I just do not think that our new "leaders" did that at all. Perhaps had they played with more conviction and heart, perhaps more than just Staal, Callahan, Hank, would have followed.
Sometimes young people need examples. Maybe they just wanted team unity.
But let's be honest, folks, for the most part the only thing this team was unified in was mediocrity.
Bottom line here. The Rangers might have picked the perfect captain, for the group of boring, lifeless players they were for most of the season. They did not pick a captain who knew what it meant to lead or to inspire. The team suffered for it.
The Rangers also suffered for having their young guys display more leadership captabilities and professionalism than 2/3rds of the guys wearing letters.
It's not Drury or Gomez's fault they are not Jagr or Shanahan. The Rangers were blessed to have two of the leagues all-time greatest play for their team and show their young players what it meant to play and succeed in this league. Blessed. And we fans were blessed too.
But while it perhaps wasn't Drury and Gomez's fault that they were put in that position, they had to have known that it was part of the package deal. Accepting the letters. Accepting the contracts. Because they are here, getting paid, other players cannot be here, and cannot help them do everything they aren't doing.
But in reality, they really weren't being asked to do everything.
Honestly, I'd have been happy if they came to play every night and showed a better example for the rest of the team.
**Sorry, these entries are slow in getting written. Apologies too, again, for the rambling, but it's hard to hammer these points down in general. This is a very hard team to wrap explaination around, which I'm sure no one can argue. A few more thoughts in my head - more soon.
Also, I do not want to make it seem as if I am absolving the 2nd alternate, Naslund, of all blame. But I kinda am. He was not perfect nor was he the solution, but I do not think that he was anything but professional here. He said the right things, win or lose, but he wasn't robotic. He was self critical when he needed to be, and critical of the team. And again, I saw him complain to the refs many more times than I ever saw Drury or Gomez. Credit Naslund for doing his job, but I still do not get the hesitancy of the other two to do theirs. I'm sorry but if any veteran with a big contract was setting a good example of professionalism and class, my bet's on it being #91.**
How significant a role? It may be impossible to ever tell.
The Quiet Captain:
As the team got set to begin their season in Prague with their plethora of Czech players on their roster - *ahem, little sarcasm there* - Tom Renney was carefully selecting his choice for captain of the New York Rangers.
Whether he put a lot of thought into this decision or none at all, we'll never know, but he settled on the guy known as Mr. Clutch, Chris Drury.
I have nothing personally against Drury; I have found him in every instance I've seen him to be a polite and kind human being. In fact, The Hockey Rodent said it best when he said he'd "'like' to like" Chris Drury. But...
I never, not for one second, thought he was the right person to be a captain here. Not at all.
Personally, I would not have named a captain so soon. And was pretty upset they chose to do so. When you have arguably the greatest European scorer in the history of the game who has set numerous team records and carried, at many times, the entire Rangers team on his own shoulders leave, and leave under the not so best of circumstances, to me the worst thing you can try to do is try to immediately replace someone of that stature.
Because you will inevitably fail. Whoever it is will never live up to what you need him to be.
My vote would have been for no captain at all. Instead name three alternate captains perhaps based on seniority with the team, or seniority in the league, and let a true captain step up during the season. Let the day in, day out routine of playing in this league and in this city name the captain for you.
But, no. Tom Renney chose to name Chris Drury as captain. Because, presumably,
Drury loved NY, because he wanted to Be a Ranger!, because he was a rotating captain on a successful team in Buffalo, and because he was a winner.
Or, in my opinion which I stated here this season, I think on some level, Tom Renney named Chris Drury captain because he was the most easy-going, and would never say anything but what the media and the brass wanted to hear in the most boring and monotonous way possible - after every single game.
And he lived up to that perfectly.
As for the rest of our expectations, he came up short.
I have my own favorite captains, both on the Rangers and in the NHL. Obviously I loved Mark Messier and think he was always a remarkable captain. He did everything.
My current favorite NHL captain, Jarome Iginla, kind of fits into that mold. He scores points and is, on many nights, the best player on his team. He is supportive of his teammates and will drop the gloves to settle something. He's eloquent and a respected presence in the league, respected by teammates, opponents and those that cover the game. He's the "do-everything" poster boy.
Shane Doan is a close second for me (and yes, it was before this year's trade deadline). He is a very talented player - very underrated in fact. He's humble. He's eloquent. And he's got a great sense of humor. If I were a player, I'd love to have a captain that would be able to keep me loose and laughing when I was uptight or give me a a speech to get me pumped up when I needed that - and most importantly, to know when each situation was necessary. He's a prideful guy, and a guy that wants to succeed. He knows how to work with everyone - veterans, rookies, coaches. Canada has many of the best hockey players in the world and when it comes time to name their captain for their international teams, Doan is always right there. I find that very, very telling in terms of his character.
Chris Drury, on the other hand, does not seem to inspire the same reaction in me, or his teammates. I think he threw one shove this year, maybe accidentally. He showed emotion four times, perhaps. I alluded to it during the season. Once after scoring the goal against the MM squad in Bern. Twice when he was angry he didn't score and a) threw his stick and b) smacked his stick on the boards nearly decapitating Steve Valiquette. And once again, when he scored his "clutch" goal in the playoffs.
As for inspiring in general, the Rangers team didn't seem inspired. Now whether or not that all had to do with the captain remains to be known, but I am of the opinion that it wouldn't have hurt if he had been more vocal.
I mean, seriously, there were so many spans of time his play was dismal, he appeared absent, and I'd swear I had yet to see him have a pulse, whether on the ice or in the post-game interview. I may expect that from a bunch of the non-factors on my team, but the captain?
That can't happen.
A captain, to me, is the right guy if he is that guy that can inspire - inspire others to play better, inspire them to love the game, inspire - anything.
Look the Rangers were blessed to have Mark Messier, the best leader in sports, and one of the greatest captains.
In between Messier's two runs, my favorite player Brian Leetch became captain. Favorite or not, I did not think Leetch was a good captain. That may have been because he loathed the fact Mark was no longer around or maybe he just wasn't able to translate his knowledge of the game to others.
The big difference though was that Brian Leetch was the best player on the team. He was the best player on a team that also had Wayne Gretzky. Leetch had no apologizing to do if he wasn't the perfect captain, because he was always the team's best player.
Drury, gosh forgive him, was not the team's best player. We can't even make a fraction of an argument for him in this case.
See you can get away with being a captain even if you aren't typical captain material if you are the best player on the team. Also true to note that you can be a leader without being a captain, but it is pretty hard to be a captain without first knowing how to lead others.
Now, all that very much aside, I do believe, pretty strongly in fact, that Drury did care very much for this team and his teammates and desire to do well. Perhaps too well. You know how Tom Renney's greatest folly in the end was his loyalty to his players, something we'd normally admire.
Well, Chris Drury's greatest downfall, perhaps, is in caring too much. And not knowing how to focus that emotion.
Instead of seeing a guy that is firing on all cylinders and go-go-go on the ice, we see a guy that was often playing timid, nervous hockey, which is no fun for us to watch and not at all effective.
I didn't necessarily come up with this theory alone. His teammates praise the heck of Chris. Renney and Torts both alluded to how much Chris cared.
So, I decided, perhaps it's not a lack of caring. It probably isn't. But more likely, it's a lack of translating that caring into something that works.
Drury made a bunch of people, myself included, very unhappy with his "won't let this ruin my Christmas" quote after the Christmas Eve-Eve massacre loss to the Capitals last December. Now, I don't really believe that Drury didn't care, or that he wasn't embarassed by the loss, BUT...to say what he said gives the opposite impression. And that is not a good thing.
As fans, I think we expect to hear some more honesty. Some more truth. Some more passion! Some more pulse! Some more anger! Some more - anything, for goodness sakes!
The utter lack of that, in addition to all else, compounded why Drury's leadership style, whatever it may be, just does not translate in New York.
And that is why he being captain was never going to work. A very nice guy, decent hockey player at times, but just not a good captain.
Leadership:
Chris Drury aside for a moment, this team, on a whole, lacked a leadership figure or figures for the young kids to latch onto. Believe it or not, this is a big problem.
I'd like to borrow some thoughts from PJ Stock to hilight this. In the weeks following the Canadiens demise, PJ talked about how when he was in NY and he wasn't doing the right thing, he always had an assistant coach telling him who to look up to.
He was told to look up to Adam Graves, Brian Leetch, Mike Richter. See how they practice. See how they approach the game. See how they work.
And PJ did. And goodness knows PJ had three amazing examples of great people and great hockey players right there. He, he was lucky.
PJ pondered just who the young Canadiens had to show them "the way."
He said in Pittsburgh, guess who sits next to Sidney Crosby. After the trade from the Isles, it's been Bill Guerin.
Guess who sat next to Drew Doughty all season in Los Angeles, he asked. Sean O'Donnell, the veteran.
He wondered who the young Canadiens, namely Carey Price and the Kostitsyns, who they had showing them what to do, telling them what not to do.
He feared they had no one.
I do not for a second think the situation is the same in New York as it is in Montreal, although there are some similarities, surely. And I think the young Rangers - especially the young Rangers - are miles beyond in maturity than many others may be. I think in that way we are blessed. Marc Staal, Lauri Korpikoski - they are 22-years-old! The great majority of the team is 24 or younger. They may be young but they do not strike me as needing people to show them how to act professionally.
HOWEVER. That does not mean that they did not lack for leadership ON the ice.
Tom Renney might not have said all the right things when he was here, but after he left he gave an interview in the NY Post where he got something very right. He said, "
"But we had a struggle all year with internal leadership, and I have to think it was very difficult for guys, especially the younger guys, to look over the locker that used to belong to No. 68 and see someone else there, and the same about the locker that used to belong to No. 14.
It's a very heavy cross to bear to be a captain or in a leadership role with the New York Rangers or any pro team in New York City. It becomes that much more of a burden if you're not accustomed to it, and struggle to reach expectations in an attempt to justify your contract."
I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. I'm not blaming Scott Gomez or Chris Drury. I know they want to win. But it's different, that's what I'm saying. And I should have recognized that."
I'm not knocking #23 and #19 (well more than I already have), but there is no way - no freakin' way - that the young guys, after playing next to guys like Jagr, Shanahan, and Straka, didn't feel a little lost looking at the quiet-man Drury and jokester Gomez.
That's just a fact. Did they need Gomez and Drury to show them how not to end up tied in controversy outside the hockey arena? - no. But they perhaps needed them to show a consistent example of putting in effort on the ice.
I am being brutally honest here, but I just do not think that our new "leaders" did that at all. Perhaps had they played with more conviction and heart, perhaps more than just Staal, Callahan, Hank, would have followed.
Sometimes young people need examples. Maybe they just wanted team unity.
But let's be honest, folks, for the most part the only thing this team was unified in was mediocrity.
Bottom line here. The Rangers might have picked the perfect captain, for the group of boring, lifeless players they were for most of the season. They did not pick a captain who knew what it meant to lead or to inspire. The team suffered for it.
The Rangers also suffered for having their young guys display more leadership captabilities and professionalism than 2/3rds of the guys wearing letters.
It's not Drury or Gomez's fault they are not Jagr or Shanahan. The Rangers were blessed to have two of the leagues all-time greatest play for their team and show their young players what it meant to play and succeed in this league. Blessed. And we fans were blessed too.
But while it perhaps wasn't Drury and Gomez's fault that they were put in that position, they had to have known that it was part of the package deal. Accepting the letters. Accepting the contracts. Because they are here, getting paid, other players cannot be here, and cannot help them do everything they aren't doing.
But in reality, they really weren't being asked to do everything.
Honestly, I'd have been happy if they came to play every night and showed a better example for the rest of the team.
**Sorry, these entries are slow in getting written. Apologies too, again, for the rambling, but it's hard to hammer these points down in general. This is a very hard team to wrap explaination around, which I'm sure no one can argue. A few more thoughts in my head - more soon.
Also, I do not want to make it seem as if I am absolving the 2nd alternate, Naslund, of all blame. But I kinda am. He was not perfect nor was he the solution, but I do not think that he was anything but professional here. He said the right things, win or lose, but he wasn't robotic. He was self critical when he needed to be, and critical of the team. And again, I saw him complain to the refs many more times than I ever saw Drury or Gomez. Credit Naslund for doing his job, but I still do not get the hesitancy of the other two to do theirs. I'm sorry but if any veteran with a big contract was setting a good example of professionalism and class, my bet's on it being #91.**
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Rangers Season In Review/Part One: The Players and the Payroll Factor. . .
If the Rangers weren't doomed from the start of the 2007-2008 season by the decisions made in the off-season, they were most certainly doomed by the start of the 2008-2009 campaign. This is something I highlighted extensively during last summer, long before the current team even took to the ice.
In "Does it Really All Add Up, Rangers Fans?" I used simple mathmatics to explain why the Rangers were, without a doubt, screwed. And screwed not just for the immediate season ahead, but for the better part of the next decade. Why? Because they had chosen to tie up essentially half their cap allotment in four players, only one of whom was an important component to their team. Those players were Gomez, Drury, Redden, and Lundqvist.
I guess I don't have to tell you which one was the "important component" now do I?
Once again, we must focus on the chosen three, not because they are chosen for greatness, but because, for reasons still unknown to, well, just about everybody, they were chosen to make the most money for Broadway's team.
#19
Gomez, in dollars and cents, makes the most money on this team at approximately 7.357 million per season. His actual salary for this year was $10 million.
Scott Gomez did absolutely nothing to warrant this type of money. That, in this post-lockout new NHL, is superstar money. And Gomez, whether you like him or hate him, you must admit is simply not worth that type of money. Never was, never will be. I said that before he ever played a game in New York and I say that again, two years into his seven year deal.
But when you pay a given player the most money on your team, it does a few things. It makes whatever line he is playing on the "#1 line." It makes him a focal point of all things good and bad with the team. And it makes him someone that people will look to - for results, for point production, for positive attitude, for leadership.
No, Scott Gomez's folly was not in his not being worth $7.357 million. His folly was in being none of those things that the Rangers needed their top money maker to be. A result getter. A point producer. A positive influence. Or a leader. Gomez was none of this.
If possible, Gomez looked even worse this year than he did the year before, this time floundering without any Jagr or Straka to hang on to. Not only did he not make himself look better, he failed to make anyone else on this team look good for more than a fraction of a moment in time. He'd have a good game, maybe two, and then fall right back off into obscurity.
When he wasn't gone off the map, he was the focal point. Oh yes, the focal point for undisciplined penalties and moronic plays. I wouldn't want to be the judge of a contest over which Rangers player made the most moronic gaffs this season, but Gomez would have to have been a finalist.
I think back to the game in Dallas in early February for two reasons. One, for the Dallas announcers calling Gomez's early pass "vacuous" and two, for him saying "this is not rock bottom." Vacuous stuck with me because it became the perfect analogy for so much the Rangers and Gomez did. They did such rookie things on the ice without seemingly any thought to the fact that they were actual honest to goodness hockey players in the NHL and not kids in pee-wees. And as for the "rock bottom" comment, that stuck with me, of course, because it got worse after that, and I always wonder whether Gomez knew something that we didn't.
But, no, it was not his failure to score points or his uncanny ability to weave the puck into the offensive zone and have it slide harmlessly off his stick, that made me loathe his being stuck on this team for five more years.
What can be worse, you ask yourself?
I never once, in all Gomez's saying "we're professionals" believe he truly understood what that meant. He strikes me as the perfect example of someone who saw how wonderful the players in New York had it and wanted to come there. Face it, he already won more than many players ever will in the league with what he won in NJ. He boasts two Stanley Cups. Some players will never win one. So he signs for a ton of money in New York and, really, who can blame him? New York apartment, New York scene. Oh yeah and play some hockey in between.
When he was in NJ, I used to think Gomez was a moron. Even when he was signed to be a Ranger, I got sick to my stomach at the thought. He always struck me as a little bit of a "punk."
What, save a few Garden of Dreams events - which are very admirable, yes - has he done to make anyone think he is any less the punk he was in New Jersey? Seriously give me one example of what he's done to prove to anyone he's matured beyond a guy that was blessed with speed and was able to fool many into thinking he was an elite hockey player in this league?
I used to think his interviews where he kidded with John Giannone about his wardrobe were cute - the first dozen times - but if that is really - really! - all he brings to this team is a funny interview, I question why they need him on the ice.
And after he did that during a playoff interview, I seriously questioned - for the hundreth time this year - just where his head was at.
If I'm making the most money on an original six team and playing in the biggest US market for a team like the New York Rangers, I can't promise the world but I should be able to promise to have my head on straight.
Gomez, I'm afraid, has never proven to me that he is capable of being a professional and having his head in the right place. He's also never proven to me that he has realized that he isn't and that he doesn't. And I actually do not know which is worse.
#23
I am saving some words on Chris Drury for Part 2 of this already incredibly long Season in Review segment. So we'll just stick to the basics here.
The Rangers signed Chris Drury because he was "clutch." They signed Chris Drury because he had been labeled a "winner." He had won at every level - Little League baseball, collegiate hockey, the NHL.
Therefore he was a "must-get."
I feel worse for Drury than I do for Gomez, because I actually believe Chris Drury wanted to do well and is upset with himself that he hasn't.
BUT, none of that makes me feel sorry for him that he, too, is making $7.050 million per season and that he had done little and has done little to warrant it.
The history of being a winner only means so much. It only means something if you can bring something tangible with you.
Drury, at his best, was inconsistent this year.
Drury, at his worst, wasn't good enough.
That's not including his playoff run where he played, admirably, with a broken hand. That is an admirable thing and that showed that he cares more about the team than himself.
I actually would never argue that fact, that Drury cares more about the team than himself. I would however admit that, sadly enough, that hasn't mean very much.
Drury, like Gomez, would be amazing on faceoffs one game, and dreadful the next. I've never, in all my watching hockey seen such inconsistency as I saw with this year's team.
Now sure, some of that, perhaps, can be blamed on the coaches, the systems, or the lack thereof, but the bottom line is a player decides on a given night if he is going to come to play or not. Not whether he will play or how much he will play or in what way he will play, but if he is going to be ready to play.
Again, I'm not sure how much this was evident in Drury's performance. In his case, perhaps, it was not a matter of caring too little but caring too much. Either way, Drury seemed ill-committed at times. Nervous. Confused.
Not what you'd want or expect from a $7 million dollar a year player.
And point production? Surely he didn't have that. Making others around him better? I cannot with honesty say I am sure he did that either.
Sometimes it is not your fault. Sometimes you just aren't good enough to live up to all the good things people want to believe about you.
Perhaps Chris Drury is clutch and perhaps he is a winner. But it means two different things to win on a team playing a team game as part of a unit and to win on a team playing a team game when you have the responsibility of being one of the biggest parts of that unit.
I have yet to see that push and that desire from Drury when he has been in New York. He scored a few game tying goals last season, one to force an Edmonton game to overtime, specifically.
This year we saw a gutsy playoff goal from Drury in game 4, which turned out to be a game winner.
This was, perhaps, the most clutch moment he had since joining the Rangers.
It was perhaps his only truly clutch moment, with two years down and three to go on his contract.
I like Chris Drury just fine. But the problem with having a great past as a winner and a clutch performer is that if you don't continue to live up to it, you will always be deemed a failure in those places you did not succeed.
It's a shame, but it's simply the truth.
#6
When all is said and done, not Scott Gomez, not Chris Drury, but Wade Redden, will go down as having the worst contract in the history of the New York Rangers.
When I heard the news that the Rangers got Redden, my immediate reaction was to vomit over a theatre balcony. (True story)
I said Wade Redden was the last player I wanted on this team. The last, and that it killed me that he was not only on this team, but on this team for that money and for that many years.
Disgraceful.
To Redden's discredit, he did nothing to prove us nay-sayers wrong. He began the season with a bit of a snap and a goal in Prague and gave an interview where he said he was so "excited" to be playing with this team and excited to come back and play in New York.
He'd come back, indeed, and score another goal at opening night at the Garden against the Blackhawks.
Goodness hopes he had a long memory because it would be four and a half months, two head coaches, and 58 games later that he'd score again.
6.5 million for a guy that scored 3 goals all year. A guy that was, presumably, hired to be the powerplay quarterback, was a big part of the second to worst powerplay in the entire league.
His best year, numerically, was 2005-2006, where he scored 10 goals, 40 assists and was a plus 35. His best powerplay year, came in 2003-2004 when he scored 12 of his 17 goals with the man advantage.
Problem was, that his last two years in Ottawa produced paltry numbers compared to the three seasons prior. To any observer of even a handful of games in Ottawa, this was a guy that was not on the upside of anything, as I saw myself and well noted here.
And yet, he was given a contract to rival all contracts and to confound even the best of us.
You might expect me to rip into Redden here, let him have it for all he the miserable plays he made this season, for all his lack of effort and lack of goal production. But I'm not.
Instead I am going to give him a teeny-tinsy break, if only for a moment, to make a point.
Wade Redden was set up to fail in New York.
You heard me.
Wade Redden, under the best of circumstances, could never have succeeded here in New York.
For Wade Redden to be worth the contract he was given, he'd have to be in the same league as Brian Leetch, when it all comes down to it.
The Rangers have searched and discarded and pushed aside defensemen, but they have never closed their arms around anyone even half the player that Brian Leetch was.
For Brian Leetch was, in my opinion, the greatest player to play for the New York Rangers. There are things he could do that were so effortless and amazing that we all, each and every one of us, took them for granted. Took for granted that night in and night out, you'd have the most consistent, hard working, professional, and talented player play for your team.
In the years Leetch was here and in the years he's been gone, no one has even come close.
Wade Redden, in his best years, wasn't half the player Brian Leetch was.
And I mean what I am going to say next with no personal disrespect to Wade Redden, the person, but he is not even fit to sharpen Brian Leetch's skates.
That's how far off the reservation of elite NHL defensemen Wade Redden is.
And yet, he is making money comparable to what the Rangers would pay an elite defenseman of Brian's stature.
(Sure, yes, agreed, Brian Leetch would deserve much, much more, in reality, but bear with me here.)
And that - not his lack of skill, not his lack of poise, not his lack of guts -, that is why Wade Redden was doomed to fail here.
Because he is not even worth half that much, or a third of that much. And yet by giving that money to him, we all expect just too much from a man that has, sadly, nothing really left to give.
And now, the niceness stops.
Forget the dismal powerplay and Redden's horrific hesitancy to shoot the puck for the moment. Wade Redden did nothing, nothing!, to endear himself to this group.
He took the paycheck, but he didn't pay the price. He wasn't playing like a Ranger!, he was acting like a fraud.
Forget the numbers. Look no further than these two instances. On January 3rd, Redden got annoyed with Capitals captain Chris Clark, and he knocked him out, with a single punch.
Great, you say. Why bring this up? I bring this up because this still, to me, remains the only example in an entire 82-game season that I have of Wade Redden showing he had a pulse.
The second instance was on February 28th, in the great Avalanche/Rangers goal-fest. In an-already decided game, Colorado took to being nasty, and Dubinsky got involved with a player (Laperierre?) along the corner boards. Every other player went to his defense, and tied up someone.
Redden, in the ultimate moment of team unity, showed team indifference in refusing to drop his gloves so that he could gain an adequate hold on the Avalanche player. Instead he watched as Dubinsky was beaten not by one, but by two Colorado players.
Want to talk about being a good teammate? How about a decent human being? I've never seen a player so hesitant to get his hands dirty.
So no, Wade. It's not your lack of scoring, or your lack of powerplay precense that disappointed me. Remember, I - unlike Glennie Boy - knew in advance of July 1st that I didn't want you for $1 million, let alone $6.5 million, because you were just not good enough.
But it's your lack of pride, lack of support, and lack of anything resembling team unity that disgusted me more in the end.
Why? You can't help that you are a crappy player getting paid the money of a superstar in this league. But you can help your attitude and your committment to the game. I saw neither. And that is where I stop defending you.
Sure, you came back and found some of your game in the playoffs, and weren't a complete disaster there. But, seriously, the majority of the 82 games leading up to it were no-shows. We can't in all ethical honesty applaud a guy for showing up when the spotlight was on, when for every game that the fans and teammates wanted and needed more from him, he came up empty.
In closing Part One of this Season in Review, I feel I must state the obvious. None of these players alone is responsible for the disaster that this Rangers season was. None of these players is soley to blame or to chastise for that fact.
BUT, these three players have to shoulder the brunt of it.
Why?
Because of their salaries, other players - other necessary players that perhaps could actually do the jobs better - could not be obtained. Because of their salaries this team is handicapped and these players are, barring insanely tricky measures, untradable.
Is that their fault? No, perhaps not. Ultimately, of course, blame falls back to the Great Concoctor, Glen Sather.
But I, as a fan, would like to think that even if I were not that good, or even if the situation wasn't perfect, that I'd at least show up to every game, play with a sense of urgency, a sense of pride, and a sense of self-worth, that I'd play the best that I could every single night out, knowing, in the end, that was all I could do.
And I am quite sure that none of these three players did that on a regular basis, did the one thing they could control most.
So instead we can sum it all up with these words:
Saddled with similar $7 million dollar salaries from Free Agent Folly Day 2007, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury became married to this team and inevitably connected to its money woes. That is a fact that will remain true until they are no longer a part of this team, and will forever remain true in the memory of the years they spent here.
Wade Redden will have one distinction in his time in New York and it will have nothing to do with his talent or his lack thereof. It will be that he was, undoubtably the biggest most inexcusable folly in a long, long list of big and inexcusable follies.
**Many apologies for the length of this blog, but come on, let's face it: if you are coming here to read this site, you are not reading for quick hits and light reading, you come here to read the always rambling, sometimes scattered thoughts of a wordy individual.
Stay tuned in the coming week for a few more parts of the Season in Review.**
In "Does it Really All Add Up, Rangers Fans?" I used simple mathmatics to explain why the Rangers were, without a doubt, screwed. And screwed not just for the immediate season ahead, but for the better part of the next decade. Why? Because they had chosen to tie up essentially half their cap allotment in four players, only one of whom was an important component to their team. Those players were Gomez, Drury, Redden, and Lundqvist.
I guess I don't have to tell you which one was the "important component" now do I?
Once again, we must focus on the chosen three, not because they are chosen for greatness, but because, for reasons still unknown to, well, just about everybody, they were chosen to make the most money for Broadway's team.
#19
Gomez, in dollars and cents, makes the most money on this team at approximately 7.357 million per season. His actual salary for this year was $10 million.
Scott Gomez did absolutely nothing to warrant this type of money. That, in this post-lockout new NHL, is superstar money. And Gomez, whether you like him or hate him, you must admit is simply not worth that type of money. Never was, never will be. I said that before he ever played a game in New York and I say that again, two years into his seven year deal.
But when you pay a given player the most money on your team, it does a few things. It makes whatever line he is playing on the "#1 line." It makes him a focal point of all things good and bad with the team. And it makes him someone that people will look to - for results, for point production, for positive attitude, for leadership.
No, Scott Gomez's folly was not in his not being worth $7.357 million. His folly was in being none of those things that the Rangers needed their top money maker to be. A result getter. A point producer. A positive influence. Or a leader. Gomez was none of this.
If possible, Gomez looked even worse this year than he did the year before, this time floundering without any Jagr or Straka to hang on to. Not only did he not make himself look better, he failed to make anyone else on this team look good for more than a fraction of a moment in time. He'd have a good game, maybe two, and then fall right back off into obscurity.
When he wasn't gone off the map, he was the focal point. Oh yes, the focal point for undisciplined penalties and moronic plays. I wouldn't want to be the judge of a contest over which Rangers player made the most moronic gaffs this season, but Gomez would have to have been a finalist.
I think back to the game in Dallas in early February for two reasons. One, for the Dallas announcers calling Gomez's early pass "vacuous" and two, for him saying "this is not rock bottom." Vacuous stuck with me because it became the perfect analogy for so much the Rangers and Gomez did. They did such rookie things on the ice without seemingly any thought to the fact that they were actual honest to goodness hockey players in the NHL and not kids in pee-wees. And as for the "rock bottom" comment, that stuck with me, of course, because it got worse after that, and I always wonder whether Gomez knew something that we didn't.
But, no, it was not his failure to score points or his uncanny ability to weave the puck into the offensive zone and have it slide harmlessly off his stick, that made me loathe his being stuck on this team for five more years.
What can be worse, you ask yourself?
I never once, in all Gomez's saying "we're professionals" believe he truly understood what that meant. He strikes me as the perfect example of someone who saw how wonderful the players in New York had it and wanted to come there. Face it, he already won more than many players ever will in the league with what he won in NJ. He boasts two Stanley Cups. Some players will never win one. So he signs for a ton of money in New York and, really, who can blame him? New York apartment, New York scene. Oh yeah and play some hockey in between.
When he was in NJ, I used to think Gomez was a moron. Even when he was signed to be a Ranger, I got sick to my stomach at the thought. He always struck me as a little bit of a "punk."
What, save a few Garden of Dreams events - which are very admirable, yes - has he done to make anyone think he is any less the punk he was in New Jersey? Seriously give me one example of what he's done to prove to anyone he's matured beyond a guy that was blessed with speed and was able to fool many into thinking he was an elite hockey player in this league?
I used to think his interviews where he kidded with John Giannone about his wardrobe were cute - the first dozen times - but if that is really - really! - all he brings to this team is a funny interview, I question why they need him on the ice.
And after he did that during a playoff interview, I seriously questioned - for the hundreth time this year - just where his head was at.
If I'm making the most money on an original six team and playing in the biggest US market for a team like the New York Rangers, I can't promise the world but I should be able to promise to have my head on straight.
Gomez, I'm afraid, has never proven to me that he is capable of being a professional and having his head in the right place. He's also never proven to me that he has realized that he isn't and that he doesn't. And I actually do not know which is worse.
#23
I am saving some words on Chris Drury for Part 2 of this already incredibly long Season in Review segment. So we'll just stick to the basics here.
The Rangers signed Chris Drury because he was "clutch." They signed Chris Drury because he had been labeled a "winner." He had won at every level - Little League baseball, collegiate hockey, the NHL.
Therefore he was a "must-get."
I feel worse for Drury than I do for Gomez, because I actually believe Chris Drury wanted to do well and is upset with himself that he hasn't.
BUT, none of that makes me feel sorry for him that he, too, is making $7.050 million per season and that he had done little and has done little to warrant it.
The history of being a winner only means so much. It only means something if you can bring something tangible with you.
Drury, at his best, was inconsistent this year.
Drury, at his worst, wasn't good enough.
That's not including his playoff run where he played, admirably, with a broken hand. That is an admirable thing and that showed that he cares more about the team than himself.
I actually would never argue that fact, that Drury cares more about the team than himself. I would however admit that, sadly enough, that hasn't mean very much.
Drury, like Gomez, would be amazing on faceoffs one game, and dreadful the next. I've never, in all my watching hockey seen such inconsistency as I saw with this year's team.
Now sure, some of that, perhaps, can be blamed on the coaches, the systems, or the lack thereof, but the bottom line is a player decides on a given night if he is going to come to play or not. Not whether he will play or how much he will play or in what way he will play, but if he is going to be ready to play.
Again, I'm not sure how much this was evident in Drury's performance. In his case, perhaps, it was not a matter of caring too little but caring too much. Either way, Drury seemed ill-committed at times. Nervous. Confused.
Not what you'd want or expect from a $7 million dollar a year player.
And point production? Surely he didn't have that. Making others around him better? I cannot with honesty say I am sure he did that either.
Sometimes it is not your fault. Sometimes you just aren't good enough to live up to all the good things people want to believe about you.
Perhaps Chris Drury is clutch and perhaps he is a winner. But it means two different things to win on a team playing a team game as part of a unit and to win on a team playing a team game when you have the responsibility of being one of the biggest parts of that unit.
I have yet to see that push and that desire from Drury when he has been in New York. He scored a few game tying goals last season, one to force an Edmonton game to overtime, specifically.
This year we saw a gutsy playoff goal from Drury in game 4, which turned out to be a game winner.
This was, perhaps, the most clutch moment he had since joining the Rangers.
It was perhaps his only truly clutch moment, with two years down and three to go on his contract.
I like Chris Drury just fine. But the problem with having a great past as a winner and a clutch performer is that if you don't continue to live up to it, you will always be deemed a failure in those places you did not succeed.
It's a shame, but it's simply the truth.
#6
When all is said and done, not Scott Gomez, not Chris Drury, but Wade Redden, will go down as having the worst contract in the history of the New York Rangers.
When I heard the news that the Rangers got Redden, my immediate reaction was to vomit over a theatre balcony. (True story)
I said Wade Redden was the last player I wanted on this team. The last, and that it killed me that he was not only on this team, but on this team for that money and for that many years.
Disgraceful.
To Redden's discredit, he did nothing to prove us nay-sayers wrong. He began the season with a bit of a snap and a goal in Prague and gave an interview where he said he was so "excited" to be playing with this team and excited to come back and play in New York.
He'd come back, indeed, and score another goal at opening night at the Garden against the Blackhawks.
Goodness hopes he had a long memory because it would be four and a half months, two head coaches, and 58 games later that he'd score again.
6.5 million for a guy that scored 3 goals all year. A guy that was, presumably, hired to be the powerplay quarterback, was a big part of the second to worst powerplay in the entire league.
His best year, numerically, was 2005-2006, where he scored 10 goals, 40 assists and was a plus 35. His best powerplay year, came in 2003-2004 when he scored 12 of his 17 goals with the man advantage.
Problem was, that his last two years in Ottawa produced paltry numbers compared to the three seasons prior. To any observer of even a handful of games in Ottawa, this was a guy that was not on the upside of anything, as I saw myself and well noted here.
And yet, he was given a contract to rival all contracts and to confound even the best of us.
You might expect me to rip into Redden here, let him have it for all he the miserable plays he made this season, for all his lack of effort and lack of goal production. But I'm not.
Instead I am going to give him a teeny-tinsy break, if only for a moment, to make a point.
Wade Redden was set up to fail in New York.
You heard me.
Wade Redden, under the best of circumstances, could never have succeeded here in New York.
For Wade Redden to be worth the contract he was given, he'd have to be in the same league as Brian Leetch, when it all comes down to it.
The Rangers have searched and discarded and pushed aside defensemen, but they have never closed their arms around anyone even half the player that Brian Leetch was.
For Brian Leetch was, in my opinion, the greatest player to play for the New York Rangers. There are things he could do that were so effortless and amazing that we all, each and every one of us, took them for granted. Took for granted that night in and night out, you'd have the most consistent, hard working, professional, and talented player play for your team.
In the years Leetch was here and in the years he's been gone, no one has even come close.
Wade Redden, in his best years, wasn't half the player Brian Leetch was.
And I mean what I am going to say next with no personal disrespect to Wade Redden, the person, but he is not even fit to sharpen Brian Leetch's skates.
That's how far off the reservation of elite NHL defensemen Wade Redden is.
And yet, he is making money comparable to what the Rangers would pay an elite defenseman of Brian's stature.
(Sure, yes, agreed, Brian Leetch would deserve much, much more, in reality, but bear with me here.)
And that - not his lack of skill, not his lack of poise, not his lack of guts -, that is why Wade Redden was doomed to fail here.
Because he is not even worth half that much, or a third of that much. And yet by giving that money to him, we all expect just too much from a man that has, sadly, nothing really left to give.
And now, the niceness stops.
Forget the dismal powerplay and Redden's horrific hesitancy to shoot the puck for the moment. Wade Redden did nothing, nothing!, to endear himself to this group.
He took the paycheck, but he didn't pay the price. He wasn't playing like a Ranger!, he was acting like a fraud.
Forget the numbers. Look no further than these two instances. On January 3rd, Redden got annoyed with Capitals captain Chris Clark, and he knocked him out, with a single punch.
Great, you say. Why bring this up? I bring this up because this still, to me, remains the only example in an entire 82-game season that I have of Wade Redden showing he had a pulse.
The second instance was on February 28th, in the great Avalanche/Rangers goal-fest. In an-already decided game, Colorado took to being nasty, and Dubinsky got involved with a player (Laperierre?) along the corner boards. Every other player went to his defense, and tied up someone.
Redden, in the ultimate moment of team unity, showed team indifference in refusing to drop his gloves so that he could gain an adequate hold on the Avalanche player. Instead he watched as Dubinsky was beaten not by one, but by two Colorado players.
Want to talk about being a good teammate? How about a decent human being? I've never seen a player so hesitant to get his hands dirty.
So no, Wade. It's not your lack of scoring, or your lack of powerplay precense that disappointed me. Remember, I - unlike Glennie Boy - knew in advance of July 1st that I didn't want you for $1 million, let alone $6.5 million, because you were just not good enough.
But it's your lack of pride, lack of support, and lack of anything resembling team unity that disgusted me more in the end.
Why? You can't help that you are a crappy player getting paid the money of a superstar in this league. But you can help your attitude and your committment to the game. I saw neither. And that is where I stop defending you.
Sure, you came back and found some of your game in the playoffs, and weren't a complete disaster there. But, seriously, the majority of the 82 games leading up to it were no-shows. We can't in all ethical honesty applaud a guy for showing up when the spotlight was on, when for every game that the fans and teammates wanted and needed more from him, he came up empty.
In closing Part One of this Season in Review, I feel I must state the obvious. None of these players alone is responsible for the disaster that this Rangers season was. None of these players is soley to blame or to chastise for that fact.
BUT, these three players have to shoulder the brunt of it.
Why?
Because of their salaries, other players - other necessary players that perhaps could actually do the jobs better - could not be obtained. Because of their salaries this team is handicapped and these players are, barring insanely tricky measures, untradable.
Is that their fault? No, perhaps not. Ultimately, of course, blame falls back to the Great Concoctor, Glen Sather.
But I, as a fan, would like to think that even if I were not that good, or even if the situation wasn't perfect, that I'd at least show up to every game, play with a sense of urgency, a sense of pride, and a sense of self-worth, that I'd play the best that I could every single night out, knowing, in the end, that was all I could do.
And I am quite sure that none of these three players did that on a regular basis, did the one thing they could control most.
So instead we can sum it all up with these words:
Saddled with similar $7 million dollar salaries from Free Agent Folly Day 2007, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury became married to this team and inevitably connected to its money woes. That is a fact that will remain true until they are no longer a part of this team, and will forever remain true in the memory of the years they spent here.
Wade Redden will have one distinction in his time in New York and it will have nothing to do with his talent or his lack thereof. It will be that he was, undoubtably the biggest most inexcusable folly in a long, long list of big and inexcusable follies.
**Many apologies for the length of this blog, but come on, let's face it: if you are coming here to read this site, you are not reading for quick hits and light reading, you come here to read the always rambling, sometimes scattered thoughts of a wordy individual.
Stay tuned in the coming week for a few more parts of the Season in Review.**
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