- Sep 17, 2007
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Not true
I don’t get why Rangers fans on here seem to have distain toward him. How much coaching experience did Girardi have? He was just playing in the NHL 2 years ago. Messier is regarded as one of the greatest leaders in the history of professional sports. The damn leadership award for the NHL is named after him. He is the kind of person you’d think would excel at coaching
Where has Messier coached? The only thing I could find was this:
Mark Messier - Wikipedia
In late 2010, Messier coached Canada during two European tournaments—the Deutschland Cup and the Spengler Cup.
2 meaningless tournaments 11 years ago.
A year after his number was retired by the Rangers, there's this:
In February 2007, Messier publicly expressed interest in returning to the NHL as general manager for the Rangers
So there is a history with him of wanting to be given a position without doing anything whatsoever to earn it. And not even assistant GM or assistant coach, he wants to be GM or coach.
If Messier wants to be a coach, then why isn't he coaching? Why isn't he involved in team management at any level, in any league?
It might be premature to hire Girardi as an assistant, but at least he's willing to work his way up. Buffalo hired him as a player development coach in December and it was only because of the firing of Krueger and his staff that Girardi got the opportunity behind the bench.