Sather the architect of Broadway's blues
Before Michael Jackson's death, master comedian Lewis Black told a
great joke about the singer; essentially, Black said, Jackson had
become such a joke, for all the wrong reasons, that you could
simply state his name as the punch line to any setup -- e.g., why
did the chicken cross the road? Michael Jackson -- and you'd still
make people laugh.
I don't know if Black is still telling the joke (knowing what
I think I know about him, I'm sure he is), but if he needs a
replacement subject for it, I have the perfect candidate:
The New York Rangers, a.k.a. the NHL's answer to what happens
when an unstoppable force (Henrik Lundqvist) meets an immovable
object (the contracts of Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival).
To be fair, neither Redden nor Rozsival is the chief culprit
behind the Blueshirts' current skid (1-5-1 in their past seven
games; 7-14-2 since mid-October). John Tortorella isn't to blame,
either.
Nope, this mess is on the man at the top -- president/GM Glen
Sather -- and the owner (James Dolan) who continues to support him.
Let me dust off and update the rap sheet on Sather: Since he
took over as GM in June of 2000, the Rangers have won 14 playoff
games -- and no more than six in a single post-season.
But here's the biggest indictment of his tenure: As a result
of summer after summer of spending by Sather, the team's prospects
for future improvement have been severely hampered.
Redden's $6.5 million salary and Rozsival's $5 million annual
stipend are painful enough, but Rangers fans are well aware their
favorite franchise has roughly $10 million in cap space (and 16
players signed) entering next season and roughly $19 million in cap
space (and eight players signed) for the 2011-12 campaign.
Sather won't be able to foist one of his numerous
overpayments on another GM in the next off-season the way he did
with Bob Gainey last summer. He has damaged the Rangers short-term
and long-term, nearly to the same degree Isiah Thomas did with the
NBA's Knicks.
How is it, then, Dolan fired Thomas nearly two years ago?
Obviously, past successes as a basketball player carry less cache
around Dolan's office than past successes as an NHL GM and coach.
Say what you will about former Blueshirts GM Neil Smith, but
the fact remains, the latter has won a championship in New York and
the former has not. That Smith hasn't found extended employment
since then, while Sather keeps swinging and missing like a
blindfolded kid at a piñata party in a wind tunnel, speaks to
the inherent cruelties of life.
And that's perhaps the biggest insult here: Rangers fans have
had to endure the Sather era for more than a decade. Even in
Toronto, where not winning NHL championships has become the team's
predominant tradition, Sather's output in Manhattan would have had
him on the breadlines in five years, tops.
It might be different were he proficient at drafting and
developing young NHLers, but players such as Michael Del Zotto have
been the exception and Hugh Jessiman-types the rule.
To summarize: Sather no longer can draft, spends free-agent
dollars as if he were paid an agent's commission and hasn't seen
the third round of the playoffs in 10 years. He has become a hidden
husk of a fading legend, with a stick of dynamite where a cigar
used to be.
With every passing day, the shine on his story dims. However,
the more important defacing has happened to the Rangers, who have
become the most directionless of the Original Six franchises -- and
the go-to punch line for forgetful jokesters.
Blueshirts diehards deserve far better than that. But nothing
short of the current GM's removal will reverse their malaise and
stop them from believing Dolan wants 10 more years under Sather
before giving up on this ghastly vision.
Adam Proteau, co-author of the book The Top 60 Since 1967, is
writer and columnist for The Hockey News and a regular contributor
to THN.com. His blog will appear regularly in the off-season, his
Ask Adam feature appears Fridays and his column, Screen Shots,
appears Thursdays.
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