It's the saddest story in New York sports these days. Skating slowly and softly on their treadmill to oblivion, the Rangers are about to fall miserably short of qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the seventh consecutive season.
Then again, this is the franchise that went 54 years without winning the Stanley Cup, so in Ranger time, seven isn't really that long.
But if the Rangers need another 54 years to win the Cup, and they may, perhaps sometime before 2048 it will come to the attention of Madison Square Garden's corporate cheerleader, James L. Dolan, that the Glen Sather regime as president, general manager and coach has only made things worse, not better. That it's time for a regime change in the Garden's hockey department.
Then again, look how long it took him to agree to a regime change with the Knicks.
For the Rangers' rooters, it's not as if this seven-year slump were another long-suffering Stanley Cup famine. All these rooters are asking is a consolation prize for a mediocre season: one of 16 slots in the Stanley Cup playoff draw. Considering that there are 30 teams in the National Hockey League, that doesn't seem too much to ask.
You would think that by now Dolan and Sather have realized that with the payroll approaching $90 million, these Rangers, dollar for dollar, are the worst team in any sport in any era. But that's nothing new. Dollar for dollar, they were the worst team a year ago and they have not only retained that distinction, they're worse now.
With Monday night's 4-1 loss to Montreal, their 13th defeat in the last 17 games, the Rangers have dropped a desperate 13 points behind both the Canadiens and the Islanders for the last Eastern Conference playoff berth. With only 55 points, the Rangers rank a sorry 25th among the 30 teams.
That's not much return for a team with the highest payroll, but these Rangers aren't really a team in the true sense. They're merely a group of guys skating around in Ranger uniforms. More often than not, they keep skating in circles without getting anywhere.
Judging by the NHL standing in the four seasons since Dolan hired Sather, there has been no noticeable improvement. In the Sather regime's first three seasons, they accumulated 72, 80 and 78 points. They will be pressed to get anywhere near that many this season.
Sather's choice of coaches hasn't helped. For two seasons, Ron Low was uninspiring. When he could have hired Ken Hitchcock (who joined the Philadelphia Flyers), he preferred Brian Trottier, who was unprepared to be a head coach before being fired halfway through last season.
Sather has been behind the bench ever since, with no noticeable improvement. But he always looks as if he'd rather be anywhere else.
When asked Sunday to explain the difference between the Rangers and the Edmonton Oilers teams that he led to five Stanley Cup (four as coach, one as general manager), Sather snapped that those Oiler teams "learned, they paid attention" to what he said. Which seemed to leave unsaid that these Rangers, as a group, haven't learned and haven't paid attention.
But when you're a hockey player making millions for what you've already accomplished, as many of these Rangers are, it is difficult to listen or pay attention to what any coach is telling you.
More than any other sport, hockey demands that a player work hard, skate hard, hit hard and think hard. You can float through some other sports, such as baseball, basketball and even some positions in football, but you can't float through the NHL without the standing reflecting it.
In hockey you have to be determined to be successful. If you're not determined, you're defeated before you start because too many other teams are determined.
All you need to know about these Rangers' lack of determination is a glance at the chalkboards for "League standings" and "Eastern Conference standings" on the wall outside their locker room in their suburban training center off the Saw Mill River Parkway in Westchester County. Other franchises update those standings on similar boards each day, but except for the team names, the Rangers' two boards are blank.
"It was updated at the start of the season," a bystander said Sunday, "but that only lasted for about three days."
That might be the quickest surrender to the postseason by any team in any sport in any era. But dollar for dollar, these Rangers are the worst. They always seem to be skating a stride slower than their opponents. They might be able to convince themselves that they're playing hard, but it's certainly not as hard as their opponents.
With the Rangers about to miss the playoffs for a seventh straight season, only three franchises have had longer droughts. The Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils once went nine consecutive seasons (four in Colorado, five in the Meadowlands) before Lou Lamoriello rescued them. Boston and Washington each went eight straight seasons.
But for the Rangers, the last four failures under Glen Sather should be enough for Dolan the corporate cheerleader to require regime change. Even a president of the US gets only four years to show if he deserves to stay.
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