The embodiment of a franchise rebirth now must look elsewhere for employment.
Ranger fans...Garden Faithful...the 18,200 of you who walk into Madison Square Garden...you asked for it for a few weeks. You chanted it audibly last Sunday against the Flyers and maybe moreso inside the 6 inches that are between your ears for the last two months: "Fire Ren-ney!"
Clearly, the bloom has been off the rose of Tom Renney for the past few weeks as the New York Rangers have struggled to maintain their playoff standing (currently 8th) after starting the beginning of the season 10-2-1. The power play has been a season-long (as well as a tenure-long) problem, the free agent defense signings of Dimitri Kalinin and Wade Redden have been big to colossal busts, the burden put on goaltender Henrik Lundqvist is bigger than the gridlock of Manhattan, and the fans expectations being greater than what most thought have led to this firing of Renney.
And most Ranger fans support this change. My only question is: how can you be so naive to dump a man who gave a franchise the shot in the arm it needed for so many years, right to the curb like he was a pathetic loser running the Rangers?
Fans as MSG apparently didn't learn much from how bad Isiah Thomas was with the Knicks to see how good Renney was coaching the Rangers to 3 consecutive playoff appearances and two years ago, was roughly 7.7 seconds away from guiding the Rangers to the Eastern Conference Finals (and considering how good the Rangers were at handling the Big Three of the Ottowa Senators and how Jaromir Jagr owned a then fading Redden, it might as well been a Stanley Cup Final appearance). Here we stand in late February and Renney is updating his resume...
How did this happen? For one thing, Renney lost Jagr as well as Brendan Shanahan and Sean Avery and Martin Straka and General Manager Glen Sather (or "Savior" to some) never replaced them with any players of equal or greater talent for the 2008-09 season and to some extent, you could not fault Sather. Jagr and Shanahan had gotten on old legs and might have been too expensive to hold onto given their Hall of Fame status. Straka had business ventures back in the Czech Republic to explore and at 35 was not likely to get another long term deal. Avery, for all his disruptive antics on and off the ice, was too asking for too much money as a role player and without any marquee stars, the Rangers smartly locked up Lunqvist long term as their stable in net. The thought was after these events happened, the Rangers were going to be led by Scott Gomez and Chris Drury along with Lunqvist and give players like Brandon Dubinsky and Ryan Callahan time to mature along with Marc Staal (who at 22 might be the best one-on-one defensemen in the NHL already), Dan Girardi, and Petr Prucha-who had been sort of buried underneath the glut of the previous players on their way out. As a fan who had enjoyed 3 straight years in the hunt for Lord Stanley's Cup, knowing that if King Henrik got crazy hot for 4 rounds, there would be no time for any "1994" chants in the Uniondale Tomb (Nassau Colosseum), the Cup would be in New York...if the Rangers elected to develop their young talent and not make the postseason this year, you could have dealt with it and look to 2009-10 with the younger players a year better.
Instead Sather went and got Dead Legs Redden and Dimitri Kalinin to horrible contracts that makes you pine for Isiah Thomas giving Jerome James a long term deal and a free buffet card as a discount. In case you forgot, he also signed Markus Naslund (if you remember, his ghost plays right wing every now and then), and then signed Michal Rosival to a horrible extension (so horrible for Rosival that he developed a nerve condition called "dontshoothepuck-itis"), thus killing Rosival's hunger that he had for the previous 3 years and therefore buried Girardi, Paul Mara and held back the development of Corey Potter and Bobby Sangunetti in Hartford.
The message changed...the expectations were now in the "Grey Zone" of sports. The Grey Zone is the most perilous Zone to be in as a fan because you think your team can make a run but don't know if they should because it might cost you dearly for 5-10 years. In the case of the signings of Sather, the franchise might only be set back 2-3 years as long as Sather does not or did not panic and hotshot any other deals. Firing Renney was panic move #1. Firing Renney was a decision to try and motivate the players that were not performing up to their standards and to make an honest run this season back to contention. Panic move #2 would be to trade a young player with a reasonable deal for a lot just to save face for the season (this is where that Keith Thachuk for Dubinsky deal will leave me in a cold sweat). The main problem is now who takes Renney's place?
John Torterella...? "Yeah", Ranger fans shout. "He is a former Ranger coach, New York guy. Will motivate these players that Renney couldn't. By God, he won a Stanley Cup in Tampa Bay of all places!!!"
Yeah, But...
He wore out his welcome two years later (and remember this: the year after the Lightning won the Cup there was a lockout so Torterella had two years by default of being the man in the NHL) by bashing studs such as Vincent Lecavlier and Martin St. Louis publicly, and in case you have yet to figure this out Ranger Nation: coaches who win championships do not stay on the welfare line for four years because they like drinking LaBatt Blue and discussing X's and O's with Maguire and wondering how much of a lecherous prick Don Cherry actually is on Hockey Night in Canada. Torterella could not get along with his stars and the city of Tampa Bay, will New York and Larry Brooks' mighty pen be a salve to him? Highly unlikely. He or any interim coach will inherit a situation that on the surface has the Rangers struggling to stay in the playoffs (yes fans, the Rangers are actually still in 8th place in the Eastern Conference and Carolina and Buffalo have goaltending injuries that is now more vital than ever so it will take the Toronto Maple Leafs and their 5 Year Plan to get rid of the Rangers from postseason contention), and struggling to live up to the expectations that clearly are weighing on winners such as Gomez and Drury.
Gomez in years past when things might have gone south could look behind him and see the all-world goaltender (Martin Brodeur) and the greatest defense pairing of all time (Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermeyer) and feel that the world is ok. Drury could look back and see Patrick Roy and Ray Bourque and then to the side of him see Joe Sakic and Petr Foresburg and feel that the world is ok. They both have the King and Staal right now but they have no one else and now they have a new head coach who will change the system to attack and take risks offensively, which might help Gomez. Drury's game will not change as well as the big game ability of the Ranger captain, but the message has or might change. Will it work? Can Naslund find his hands on the power play again? Can Redden finally be Redden on both ends of the ice? Will Rosival shoot when he is open? Will Prucha see the light of day and play alongside Zherdev and Lauri Korpikoski?
Will the change work? I hope I am wrong about Torerella and his ability to get along with his better players without killing them. I hope the Rangers find their balance again as an offense and have the Garden behind them once again. I hope...I hope...I hope.
With Tom Renney I had hope...now I don't know what I have.
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