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Monday, February 2 2004
The Path Not Taken
Time is relentless. First it nurtures and develops, strengthens and matures,
until finally it begins to decay and destroy life. Every aspect of existence
is touched by this intangible force and all must eventually succumb to it.
A true hallmark of greatness is when a person can not only battle back against
time and prolong themselves against such opposition but to realize the moment
when time has laid claim to victory. In such an instance, a person must
acknowledge the defeat and begin the battle anew. In terms of running a
National Hockey League franchise, that moment of comprehension is the difference
between embarrassing futility and understanding that present failure exists for
future glory. That moment came for Glen Sather and instead of understanding its
significance, he chose to ignore it and continue a fight he'd already lost.
Much to the detriment of the New York Rangers, its General Manager, coach,
and President has set the team back years in its development simply through his
refusal to allow the team to become worse.
Few men could lay claim to the track record that Glen Sather can, but it is
that glorious past that has shackled him to a bloated ego, and an arrogance that
has crippled his team for the past four seasons. He arrived in New York from a
much different place in Edmonton, Alberta. There he'd seen one of the greatest
teams ever to exist, ripped asunder because of the greed and incompetence of owner
Peter Pocklington. However, even after having seen little return for the greatness
he was trading away, the Oilers still managed to recover and see playoff berths
in his past four seasons at the helm. This was in spite of atrocious drafting
(only five players turned out to be solid NHL caliber players) and consistently
having to trade good players for lesser talent. Yet there were shrewd trades and
youth developed into excellent players and people still believed that Glen Sather
was a man who possessed a prodigious hockey mind and was still capable of the game's
highest success but was held back by the team's financial situation. So in the year
2000 when it was clear that he would no longer be part of the Edmonton Oilers
organization, it was with great relief that he came to the New York Rangers, a team
with much more resource available to it than the smaller market he'd just left.
There was a belief that he would restore sanity to the free spending team that hadn't
seen the playoffs in three seasons. A place where once great players came to retire
and collect their last few large paychecks. Yet from that very first season, none
of those things happened.
A single phrase can be used to sum up, Glen Sather's tenure as leader of the
largest market in the NHL, What if? Every major transaction from unrestricted free
agent signing to player trade to coach hiring seems to have been governed by these
two simple words. He's acquired players that have either, not lived up to potential
elsewhere or have had great pasts who might still be capable of surpassing those
previous benchmarks. The list of players acquired is quite remarkable, based on name
recognition. That, however, is the only positive once performance is taken into
account.
Vladimir Malakhov UFA 2000
Mark Messier UFA 2000, 2002, 2003
Guy Hebert Waiver claim 2001
Zdeno Ciger UFA 2001
Eric Lindros Trade 2001
Bryan Berard UFA 2001
Pavel Bure Trade 2002
Tom Poti Trade 2002
Bobby Holik UFA 2002
Darius Kasparaitis UFA 2002
Mike Richter UFA 2002
Mike Dunham Trade 2002
Alexei Kovalev Trade 2003
Anson Carter Trade, 2003
Greg deVries UFA, 2003
Brian Leetch UFA, 2003
Jaromir Jagr Trade, 2004
Not a single one of these players has come to the Rangers and been the positive
influence it was expected they would be. Most have suffered through injury troubles
or been misused to the point that they've been utterly ineffective within the team's
structure. There's a visible pattern of failure that is clear to anyone with the
ability to do a statistics search and yet the man in charge of the team seems willing
to continue making the same type of personnel transactions with seemingly no fear of
any sort of reprisal. In just under four seasons the New York Rangers have failed to
make the playoffs, continued to acquire aging players to be saddled with inappropriate
roles, and has only shown consistency in the team's final mediocre standing at the
end of the season. The question now should shift from, What if? to, Why's it allowed
to continue? That question will probably never be answered in public but one thing is
clear, it is the fans of the team who will be burdened with the suffering that Glen
Sather has wrought upon the franchise.
Not very often does someone get a second chance to correct a past mistake, but
that moment is once again approaching for Glen Sather. He can, after this season
undoubtedly moves towards failure, start to mend the errors of his ways. It will be
possible for him to move out the crippled parts of his team in exchange for youth and
future potential or he can continue to maintain the status quo. He has a boss and
will eventually be relieved of his duties but the state of the Rangers at that time
will all depend on his actions from now until the beginning of September. What if?
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