Building a successful team, no matter what the sport, is an inexact science, to say the least. If it wasn't, we would have a league of absolute and total parity.
Stepping back and looking at the big picture: since the first lockout, the Ranger modus operandi has been to build a young core and once that core developed to supplement them with high end talent, even to sacrifice some of the young talent to bring in more experienced high end talent.
This is SOP in all sports and if you think of it, how the Yankees have been successful since the mid 1990s. It is not a bad philosophy.
We had our core and the high end talent that was supposed to bring us the Cup during a brief window (including last year) was Gaborik, Richards, and Nash. We brought in a coach, Renney, to stabilize the team after the lockout and then a coach, Torts, who everyone knew had a short shelf life but whose peak of influence would coincide with the window of talent the team had. I was never a Torts fan but I give him credit for creating a team that for an instant was more than the sum of its parts: hard working and hard nosed, never say die, blue collar work ethic, a team nobody wanted to play against.
What happened? Gabby, who I love, was inconsistent from year to year, and who clashed with the coach's philosophy. Whose fault was that? I blame Torts: you don't take a high end offensive talent and shackle him by stressing defense first.
Richards, who almost everyone here on the boards, including me, thought was an excellent signing and just what we needed, aged quickly and deteriorated far from his hoped for roll as a #1 center. Even though he appears to be better this year, he is still far from what he was and never will be again.
Nash was the ultimate gamble. The thought of Gabby, Richards, and Nash together was enticing to everyone and the trio would be the high ending grouping to deliver the Cup. We sacrificed two people from our core. We can argue all we want about the price we paid and I think the team misses Dubinsky more than it thought that it would, but it was the gamble we took. I gamble we perhaps had to take.
The lockout happened. Torts used up his shelf life. The group dynamic Torts created was not sustainable/
Coming into this year I was just not impressed with the talent level of our forwards: trying to look at it objectively, hard for any fan to do, I felt that we overvalued some of our forwards, in particular Stepan and Brassard. Good hockey players yes, but top end centers, no. I thought we were to small, to slow, and not physical enough. When camp opened, the most exciting part for me was to see which of our young forwards would win starting jobs on the top 9. None really did.
I thought what would save us was Henrik and our D. I am totally confused as to why our D seems so lost and helpless. Could they have been so robotisized by Torts that they can't think on the ice? Hard to believe that. Hard to believe that it is just system. I don't know what is going on here.
Where to go from here? Obviously, we are not this bad. But that doesn't mean we are any good. The whole disjointed training camp schedule, long road trip,etc hasn't helped. I expect things to get somewhat better but not appreciably so: we are still small, slow, and not fast in a league that values size, speed, and strength.
Our plan has not worked. Our young core has developed into some fine NHL players but there are no elite, high end players among our forwards.
Plans don't work in sports all the time. Failure is more common than success. Moves that look good at time backfire and when that happens everyone complains about a team being a collection of misplaced parts. Monday morning quarterbacking becomes common. The teams that can be competitive for a long time, like the Wings, and I hate to say it, the Devils, are the exceptions to the rules.
If things don't get better soon we need to jettison some of our dead wood players; guys who are slow and can't compete in today's league: Boyle, Pyatt, Asham, and Moore (nice story but does he have the talent anymore?)
We need to plug in our next wave of young players quickly: Hrvik, Kristo, Miller, Kreider, Lindberg. But the problem here is once again, there doesn't appear to be any high end potential here. I once thought Kreider might be an elite talent: he still may be but I have my doubts.
I don't see how we are going to contend for a Cup anytime soon. Distressing when you are almost 66 years old, have been a fan for over 50 years, and have seen one Cup. Teams are locking up their young players for their prime years and even with the cap going up in the next few years, signing high end free agents (who may or may not work out) may not be an option.
But, that is hockey and sports. You just never know what will happen to your best laid plans (see: Mets with Matt Harvey,Yankees a few years ago depending on Chamberlain, Hughes, and Kennedy, Mets of the 90s with Wilson, Isringhausen, and Pulsipher, Cubs with Kerry Wood and Pryor). You just don't know. I know all of these examples are injury related but just show how hard it is to build a team.
To be a life long sports fan means to deal with failure more than success.
These games have been horrible. As bad as I can ever remember. I'm not sure whether this team is capable of making the playoffs. I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet but if this continues until Christmas, I say it's time to start again. By the way, Sather has long outlived his usefullness.
We had a very, very good core, starting from 05, when we had guys like Petr Prucha. We had a solid drafting system since we were able to develop Stepan, Del Zotto, Callahan, Dubinksy, Anisimov...
Also, take note that the above process of drafting homegrown talent takes years, probably 5-8 before you start to see results, winning results.
Answering against the bold, i think this is where people are going "wrong" with why we became so bad... It was not the Nash trade, it was not the Gabs trade, it was not Torts work attitude, and not because Richards started deteriorating.... it was
ALL of those things occurring
in the same offseason, which happened to be a lockout year... Granted, each of these things had their individual hurt that, in most circumstances,
can be worked through with few hiccups. The issue became that
we had to now deal with these 4 minor pitfalls simultaneously... That's like a person with cancer suddenly being diagnosed with MS, and then finding out your immune system is hardly functional... It takes a LONG, LONG time to recover from multiple wounds in a short amount of time
Lord knows we were on a good path, and we shed some core to get some additional offense... It WAS a gamble, a gamble that management was willing to take, and it partially worked... we finished slightly ahead of where we normally did in regular season, and made it to round 2 of the playoffs... However, after that, we realized that lost the gamble... That is when you started to see things fall apart.
The multiple wounds became too much to nurse, and now we are sick. We've tried several band aids to patch our way through (The gaborik trade was a bandaid to get into the playoffs in 12-13, because if it wasn't for Brass killing it and John Moore actually doing something on the powerplay before our lame playoff run, we would not have gotten in there). Unfortunately, band-aids fall off after a little while, and if the cut never healed, you're still wounded. That's what you see right now.
We have a new coach (or "doctor", if you will) that can help us heal these wounds, but it's going to take some different ingredients, and that's why NEXT offseason will be a serious turnover outside of our core players. AV will have a chance to build a new team, with new parts...
fact is, we probably won't see success out of the gate, it will take us several years. We differ from Vancouver because they already HAVE a talented squad. We lost our talent due to the above i just wrote. They're not going to have as many issues as we are because we really are at a crossroads
It's not hard to see why, because it's all of those things above occurring together... However, hindsight is always 20/20, just like business... Everything... literally EVERYTHING needs to go right in order to win. You'll never always be right, but as a person, GM, boss, etc, you have to make the effort to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of those opportunities. We did in 11-12, and now that time is up. Time to start again.
In regards to this team right now, it'll get somewhere. I have a feeling we see some roster shakeup by december, which is fine with me, because our "new core" which seems to be thought of as Lindberg, Fast, Miller, Krieder, etc need some time to develop their own chemistry in the A. Once they do, they can come up as a collective line, and use their chemistry here. I suspect this is what AV will attempt to do.
