Rants and Misspeaks

I misspoke the other day when I called the St. Louis Blues a bottom feeder. Prior to the Ranger game the Blues were on a 7-2-1 roll and only one less point, 65, than the Rangers. The fact that we struggled against them was not a surprise, the fact we came back so late in the game to pull it out was a big surprise. Maybe we are the bottom feeders?

Talk to an Islander fan and they will tell you that they are having a great year. Talk to a Ranger fan and they will tell you that they are having a miserable year. Look at the standings and you will see that the Islanders are only six points ahead of the Rangers in the standings. Add in the OT losses as regular losses and the Islanders are one game over .500 and the Rangers are three games under .500. The Islanders have lost two more OT games than the Rangers have. Two extra points. instead of none. Also, the Islanders have beaten the Rangers four out of four and there is eight points right there. So having taken all eight points from the Rangers why aren't the Islanders way ahead of the Rangers? It could be that the Islanders aren't having that great a year after all and the Rangers really are having a miserable year.

So Glen Sather showed up at the Mark Messier tribute in Edmonton and was extolled as an Edmonton icon. Funny, I don't remember seeing him at the Messier tribute in New York, or the Richter tribute or the ceremony yesterday for John Davidson. He is the stealth GM and President of the Rangers. This is the guy who was praised by the drive by sports media a few years ago by dumping some Ranger stalwarts such as Leetch, Kovalev and Graves and getting in return hotshot prospects. Who are these hotshots? One, Josef Balej, played all of thirteen games with the Rangers, scoring all of five points, (1-4). He is now playing in a Swiss A league in Europe. We lost Kovalev on this one, but we got a guy named Bruce Graham also. Does anyone out there know where Graham is? He is with the Charlotte Checkers having a decent year, (29-15-44). We gave Kovalev up for a prospect that may never develop or is a good three to five years away. In other words, we gave up Kovalev for nothing.

Brian Leetch was traded for Jarkko Immonen, Maxim Kondratiev and prospects Chris Chucko and Michael Sauer. Despite the absence of a second line center the Rangers refused to give Immonen a chance to fail until now that we have injuries. Kondratiev played 29 games for the Rangers and was (1-2-3) before he was traded to Anaheim for Petr Sykora who was not resigned in the off season. Michael Sauer is playing for the Medicine Hat Tigers in the WHL and in 29 games is (1-9-10). Chucko plays for Omaha in the AHL and is (10-10-20) in 60 games. So we gave up Leetch for a suspect Immonen, according to our high prospect specialists, and nothing else. We traded Leetch for nothing.

Some GM. He gave up two NHL All Stars for basically nothing which doesn't help us this year and will probably not help us in the foreseeable future. Compare Glen Sather's seven year fiasco with that of John Davidson's one year tenure for St. Louis. In hindsight we should have traded Glen Sather for John Davidson while Davidson was an announcer on MSG. Now that would have been a trade and instead of JD's, "Oh Baby" we might have gotten Glen Sather's, "I missed that one Sam."

The Rangers are now only four points behind Carolina for the eighth spot and we have two games in hand. Unfortunately we have Toronto (2 points) and Montreal (3 points) ahead of us with one game in hand on Toronto and three on Montreal. However, we have to beat the Islanders otherwise Islander fans can say they are having a great year and Ranger fans can moan on what should have been.

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