CBC-Sports

Sather took too many gambles

February 24, 2009 11:04 AM | Posted by   Jeff Marek  

Leave the stage while the audience is still clapping, Glen.

That’s probably the best advice an actor or athlete can get in terms of maintaining their legacy status.

In New York the applause stopped long ago and perhaps it’s time someone told the GM that it’s time to stop bowing.

It’s getting a little embarrassing.

And the cheers, which once filled the Garden, have now turned to jeers as Monday cost a fine hockey coach in Tom Renney his job.

Sad.

Not only a great hockey mind, Renney also brought a class and dignity to a team that has been horribly constructed.

Not that I can fault the players for their deals, but in the salary cap world, performance is married to payment more than ever.

I mean, what were the Rangers expecting with so many gambles on their team taking up cap space and ice time?

Is it Wade Redden’s fault Sather signed him to one of the most bloated, one-sided contracts in the history of the game (6 years at $39 million US)? Redden was getting that money from one person and one person only - Sather. Redden's performance this season has been the same that it was in his final wind-down with the Senators: underwhelming.

Redden is getting booed out of the building, along with fellow defenceman Michael Rozsival, who Sather signed on for another four years at $5 million per.

If anyone of you were in Scott Gomez’s shoes, er skates two summers ago, would you have turned down a seven-year $51.5-million deal? He hasn’t turned into the 90-point centre the team thought they were getting when he was signed July 1, 2007. That’s not to say he isn’t still a good player, just not at the first-line level expected to shoulder the offensive load.

How about $8 million over two years for Markus Naslund? Ask anyone in Vancouver how the former sniper was a shell of his former self in his final tour with the Canucks. Naslund is another player walking down the shady side of his career mountain. But that didn’t stop Sather from signing one of his great reclamation projects, which he’s been addicted to going back to his days in Edmonton.

You can’t get out from under these contracts folks, that is, unless you want to have the most expensive AHL team in history (one that already boast Patrick Rissmiller riding the bus at a cool million per season for two more years).

Everyone on this team is a minus player except Nicolai Zherdev (plus-2) and Ryan Callahan (plus-1). It’s a team that can’t score and is saved most nights by the all-world goaltending of Henrik Lundquist.

How are the Reangers in the playoff picture then, you ask?

The shootout.

New York is one of the top teams in the skills competition with nine wins…but refresh my memory, how do games end in the playoffs?

Once thought of as a hockey genius, Sather has stayed on stage long enough now in New York to show people how his time has come and gone.

Normally, I would say this is Sather’s last coaching hire but with the Rangers organization, that’s doubtful. MSG chairman James Dolan still buys the act and is also hesitant to pull the trigger on high profile firings until absolutely forced. How long did Isiah Thomas stick around after his “best before” date expired?

And the Rangers are going back to John Tortorella, this time as a head coach to try and turn Gotham around. I like “Torts”, most of us in the media do. Firstly, he’s a very good coach with a proven track record. He’s a Stanley Cup winner with an ability to get the most production out of his team possible. His firing last year (and specifically how it was handled publicly) by the Tampa Bay Lightning was a low point in that organization’s brief history. Tortorella deserved better.

But does he have it in New York?

Well, at least one of the top coaches in the league is in the game again, but we can already see conflict on the horizon, with Sather intent on shoving Sean Avery down his new coaches throat once he’s available on re-entry waivers from Dallas.

Did anyone else find it strange the way Sather talked about Avery as if he were already Rangers property?

Tortorella, working as a commentator for TSN this season, however has been outspoken about Sean Avery, saying he has no place in the league and is an embarrassment.

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