Blood on The Tracks: War & Upheaval in Rangerstown
Photo Credit: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
After one of the most eventful 48 hour periods in the history of the New York Rangers, it’s time to mark the bodies and assess the damage. Team President John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton are gone, fired by Madison Square Garden chairman Jim Dolan Wednesday due to a myriad of factors. It’s hard to suss out what’s fact and what’s fiction at this point, with reports varying from a disagreement between Dolan and Davidson/Gorton over the statement released Tuesday condemning the NHL’s lack of actions against Capitals forward Tom Wilson to Dolan feeling the team had underachieved this season.
The latter falls in line with what Dolan and the Rangers released in a statement shortly after the firing, with many believing that long-time Garden confidant Glen Sather, sewed the seeds of doubt in Dolan’s mind. Rangers superstar emeritus and perennial coaching candidate-waiting-in-the-lobby Mark Messier appears to be the third man in the equation, echoing sentiments that the Rangers weren’t built properly to handle players like Wilson on The Michael Kay Show yesterday afternoon. It’s too soon to say if newly appointed president and general manager Chris Drury will cave to this long-standing fantasy of Dolan, but if you’re asking me to make a prediction, expect #11 to swoop down from the rafters this summer to save a team that didn’t need saving.
Enough looking into the future, there will be plenty of time to do so coming up. It does need to be said, however, that the charge that this team has somehow “underachieved,” in the minds of fans, is utterly ridiculous. If that was truly Jim Dolan’s belief, then he truly is looking to please an audience of one in that regard. Fans of MSG’s other professional team shouldn’t be shocked to learn this, but whatever happened, it feels like something blew up in Dolan’s face here. Several outlets were reporting yesterday that Dolan intended to take his frustrations out on GM Jeff Gorton, and when the highly-respected Davidson refused to be a part of such a move, both found themselves thrown overboard. Credit to JD for standing up for what he believes in, if that’s what happened. All he did during his just under two years as President of the Rangers was sign Artemi Panarin, trade for Jacob Trouba and draft Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere. Davidson leaves the Rangers organization the same legend he returned to it two years ago.
Gorton’s legacy with the Rangers will be slightly more mixed, but overall, you have to give the man credit for the job he’s done reloading this team in such short order. Securing a young nucleus of talent through the draft while taking chances on players like Mika Zibanejad, Ryan Strome and Ryan Lindgren has afforded the Rangers an opportunity to “underachieve,” at this stage of their development. The Rangers have amassed more talent than they’ve had since the mid-90s in the two and a half years since “The Letter,” was written to fans admitting that a rebuild was necessary. Gorton did mishandle one of the more crucial moves of the process, trading team captain Ryan McDonagh and forward JT Miller for next to nothing, but that botch almost makes the Rangers current standing all the more impressive. The Rangers survived getting Brett Howden back for their most valuable asset, largely due to the full body of work done by Gorton and his scouting department. Signing one of the five best players in the world doesn’t hurt, either.
Fans knew how this season was likely to play out from the second the re-aligned divisions and adjusted playoff format was announced. Knowing the Rangers would have to play five of the league’s toughest and most experienced teams all season long was going to be a long and difficult chapter in the Rangers rebuild. It was made painfully apparent that this team lacked toughness and grit when they were swept from the play-in round by the Hurricanes last July. If you want to nitpick Davidson and Gorton for not bringing something to combat that, okay, go ahead, but these are not the kind of moves (or lack thereof) that should cause organizational upheaval. The base of a very competitive team with a very long window to compete is already in place, the missing pieces we’re talking about are the exact kind of players good teams acquire along the way. A major flaw in the previous Rangers team of 2009-2016 vintage was that they had arguably too many role players, too many tough guys, too many solid hockey players. They tried Marian Gaborik, they tried Rick Nash, but the Rangers couldn’t find the star to lift them in moments where Henrik Lundqvist was standing on his head with no answer from his teammates. The Rangers will not lack that guy this time around, they have the makings of about four or five of those guys, and that’s the most important thing to keep in perspective if you are Jim Dolan or Chris Drury.
It is important to make mention of the old-fashioned fight night that took place at Madison Square Garden last night. From the first, largely irrelevant drop of the puck the Rangers and the Capitals were at each other’s throats, with a rare but glorious triple fight off the opening face-off. The saltiness never subsided, with the Rangers accumulating a literal White Album of penalty minutes, lending 85 of the game’s 141 minutes of total penalty time. To be fair, the 4-2 win by the Capitals was in some ways a pretty shameful display of hockey, but it was the desired product of George Parros, the NHL and NBC given the pitiful measures taken to “discipline,” Tom Wilson for piledriving Artemi Panarin and Pavel Buchnevich earlier this week. The Rangers lost pretty much every fight worth counting, but that didn’t really matter. There will come a time when that matters, and apparently that’s what Chris Drury is being elevated into the big boy chair to solve. Last night was about the Rangers pushing back and sticking up for their most valuable teammate, every fan had to appreciate seeing exactly that. As pointed out by many, now long-time Rangers defenseman Brendan Smith deserved a star for even stepping to Tom Wilson, as the Blueshirts were left to exact frontier justice by the very agencies established to protect the game from such nonsense. Going forward, the Rangers must do a better job in making sure no one takes liberties with their star players. If the NHL is not going to hold players accountable, the team will have to put themselves in a better position to do it for themselves.