It's still far too early for me to put together my in depth analysis of the Rangers huge free agent acquisitions. I want to kick things around for a while. More importantly, I want to wait and see what happens with the remaining free agents still available. Even more importantly, I want to see how the rest of the Rangers roster falls into place before the start of the season. Instead, I'll be tackling some of the sub-issues that go into the over-all analysis. I'll look at these sub-issues one at a time until the final analysis is complete. I'd love to get feed back from my readers. Thankfully, I've been getting significant traffic to the site (thanks in large part to The Blueshirt Bulletin and Spector who posted links to my blog on their respective sites), but reading isn't enough! I want you guys to start participating by posting comments of your own. Enough with the intro, let's get started!
One of the first things that came to mind when the Rangers signed Gomez & Drury was: uh-oh the Ranger$ are back! Here come the glory days of Brian Skrudland, Mike Kean, Sylvain Lefaibvre, Stephan Quintal, Valeri Kamensky, Theo Fleury, Dave Karpa, Vladimir Malakhov, Bobby Holik, Darius Kasparitis, am I leaving anyone out here?!?! But then I came to my senses. It's not deja-vu all over again. Why? Because these Rangers are different and these players are different:
These Rangers Are Different:
The free agent Ranger$ were really born after Messier left. At that point the heart of the team was literally ripped out. Messier's shoes were so big that NO ONE could have filled them. It really wouldn't have made a difference who the Rangers would have picked up at that point. The end result would have been the same regardless. Messier's shadow loomed so large that even when he was no longer in the locker room his presence, or should I say absence, was palpable. The team just couldn't get out of the shadow of The Captain and 1994. For that reason, it was impossible to create any sort of meaningful chemistry on the team. Expensive square pegs were constantly forced into round holes: Skrudland and Keane were signed in the immediate aftermath of the Messier departure. They were supposed to help fill the leadership void. Enough said! As much as I hate to say this, the problem was only compounded by the eventual resigning of Messier. Mess was a shadow of his former self. Whether any one openly admitted it or not, everyone was hoping that the Captain was back in the full sense of the word. He was not nor could he have been. In the end, even Mark Messier could not fill the void of, well..., Mark Messier. And so the Ranger$ continued to try to force their way back to the future. I've said it before and I'll say it again: sports is a microcosm of life. You can't force life to happen and you can't force success in sports either.
Management should have realized back then that it was time to start over. Teams can typically stay at or near the top for 5 - 10 years at a time depending upon such factors as the age of the core players, the style of play the team has and now you can add contract/cap issues as well. That NY Ranger team ran its course after reaching the conference finals in '97. Mess left thereafter and that should have been it. Time to start over. Instead, we suffered seven more years of forcing the issue. Evey year we bribed players to come to Broadway. Every year we forced square pegs into round holes. A wise man once said that if you do what you did, you get what you got. In other words, if you don't learn from your mistakes you're destined to repeat them. The Ranger$ didn't learn from their mistakes. The Ranger$ did what they did and got what they always got: nothing.
Then came the weeks leading up to the lockout. It was over. Time to put 1994 to bed. The Captain wasn't going to come back. Leetch was gone. Kovalev was shipped off yet again. We respectfully buried our dead and waited excitedly for the birth of the next generation. A new age definitely dawned on Broadway.
Sather and Co. very wisely built a Euro flavored team around Jaromir Jagr. The Big Fella was revitalized and the team was back in contention much faster than anyone expected. Once the shadow of 1994 was lifted, chemistry was possible again. Credit Sather & Co. for putting together the right mix.
Which brings us to July 1, 2007. The Rangers were coming off of a second round loss to the Sabres. The Rangers lost that series more than Buffalo won it. After the series Lindy Ruff acknowledged that the Rangers had given Buffalo (a team that fully expected to compete for The Cup) one hell of a scare. The general consensus was that the Rangers were a couple of pieces away from making a serious run. Everyone knew that the team lacked a true #1 center-man. Nonetheless, we expected the team to resign Nylander for that role. For although Nylander is by no means a number 1 pivot, his undeniable chemistry with Jagr was too much to risk (or so the "group-think" mantra went). The second most important piece of the puzzle (and the piece most likely to be acquired due to the aforementioned Nylander quandary) was a second line center. Guess what? the Rangers filled those holes with the appropriate personnel. They got a guy with first line ability for their first line and one of the best second line centers for their second line. They didn't sign Drury to be the #1 guy and they didn't ask Gomez to be the #2 guy. They actually got a round peg for a round hole and a square peg for a square hole. This team is different.
Gomez and Drury Are Different:
What makes them different? (1) as previously mentioned, these guys actually fill the needs of the team; (2) They're significantly younger than previous free agents signed by the Rangers; (3) According to many sources, they actually want to play for NY and not just get paid by NY; and most importantly (4) these guys are not being asked to be the new face/identity of the team (we have that in Jagr, Shanahan and Lundqvist), these guys are being asked to get us over the hump- a perfect role for free agents to play.
Don't read more into this post than it is. I'm not giving my stamp of approval to these signings just yet. I'm simply saying that these moves were made by the NY Rangers NOT the Ranger$.
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