Ex Officer Friendly
Got Nothin To Say
People love the blame game after every loss, ignoring the fact that you can't go 82-0 and there is going to be nights where you just aren't talented enough.
Whose fault was it that Gaborik disappeared? Whose fault was it that Richards and Nash were postseason no-shows? Whose fault was it that Staal lost his vision? Whose fault was it that Lundqvist for the first time in his career couldn't stop the Bruins?
The players hated Torts. Respected? Maybe. But the rift was too great. They were going public with their misgivings, Lundqvist bringing the biggest scare with his comments in the offseason.
This team is 20-19-2 no matter who the coach is. The players Sather has assembled aren't working well enough to contend.
Agreed, it is difficult when at the start of the season 3 of the top 6 are hurt (Nash, Callahan, and Hagelin) Hank is obviously having an off year. To say that Torts would have done anything better with the group that is assembled is a little far fetched. The one thing that can be said is with the 6 goalie system Hank may not have been so exposed.
You have to give AV at least a season and a half, reason being we can write this season off because while the team is talented in its own sense the team was built for a Torts system. AV's system needs to have good quality offensive defensemen, his best year in Vancouver (the 2011 season) he had Edler with 33 points, Hamhuis with 23 points, Beiksa with 22 points, and Erhoff with 50 points (which was tied for 5th on the Team).
Kesler with 73 points had a fantastic year behind the Sedins (Hendrik had 94 and Daniel had 104 points), and they got contributions from people like Mikael Samuelsson with 50 points. Forget the combined 271 points of the top 3 scores. With this Rangers team who could honestly put up 50 points Nash (should be), Richards (should be), after that however, who? Callahan, Stepan and.... Hagelin? Kreider? McD? Brassard? They also had good scoring behind that 50 point mark, Burrows had 48, Raymond had 39, even Raffi Torres had 30 points.
The way that I see it, the GM group should be sitting down with AV and figuring out who they would need on the team to make them have success. Building a team around a couch is a good idea for this because building an offensive system is more difficult and harder to do than a defensive system. Now unfortunately for the Rangers they will not be able to draft twins this season that are able to put up a combined 198 points but with some changes they could be able to replicate the scoring with other scorers. IT will be difficult but it can be done and as a fan base we need to be patient and allow them to make changes.
Torts went to another team he is not the coach of the Rangers, do the players regret the firing more than likely not, if anyone does it is the players that will be shipped out because they do not fit this system.