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Confirmed with Link: New York Rangers Hire John Davidson as President

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^^^^^ I hope this starts to relieve some of your concerns @Ola as its clear here that this team intends to finally address the albatross that is Hartford. Refreshing to hear, and excited to see who gets hired here.
 
NYRKING30 said:
^^^^^ I hope this starts to relieve some of your concerns @Ola as its clear here that this team intends to finally address the albatross that is Hartford. Refreshing to hear, and excited to see who gets hired here.
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Great to hear!!

If he didn’t do this, there would be reason for concern because it’s long overdue. And it’s not necessarily driven by Gorts and Drury — because there has been no stopping them from doing it the last years either.

Most importantly is to get people there that recognize what the AHL is about, what it takes, what you can and cannot do. It’s not like we haven’t had vet support, Holland is a top AHL guy, and so forth. But there has been no balance between ambition on ‘how’ to play, how many kids we have there, the vets we have and so forth.

The play on the ice cannot be a secondary concern. It has a huge impact on how the kids develop, because it’s part of the practice. A key part. Up until now we have harvested the prospect crop outside the NHL/AHL yearly, brought in a vet or two, and told the coach to play like the NHL team — all independently of each other. And the results has been accordingly. You can only play a way that the group of players you have let you play. The AHL in itself is a different animal than the NHL with its special challenges.

These things must add up, and getting someone to HFD that understands this and can execute on it is a must. Drury obviously need a lot of support from a coach to get it done, which isn’t strange. Drury is inexperienced in management and has very little AHL experience.
 
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I liked what JD had to say. The development coaches that they'll have. that's a good concept and I hope it works in practice.

Honestly, though, I don't think much of the other stuff he said was anything different than what we were trying before. The coach doesn't need experience, winning is important but it's more about developing the kids, it's great to have a team loaded with prospects but you have to balance that with good, established, veteran presence, etc. This is not really a new philosophy here.

I guess my hope is just that the execution is better; we had good character veterans like Holland, Butler, Beleskey, O'Donnell, Brickley, and so on. It just didn't work out. McCambridge was a fairly young coach who had some success previously and was known to be liked by his players. I mean, we've been trying what JD is describing, I guess the talent evaluation, both in terms of the coaching and the veteran players, generally hasn't been there. I don't see a whole lot that's revelatory in what JD is talking about, though (other than the development coaches).
 
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Riche16 said:
Probably the best article I’ve ever read from Uncle Larry
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Eh he writes great stuff like this pretty regularly. Most of what gets attention is the more controversial, "hot take" stuff. Brooks is an extremely talented writer who knows how to conduct an interview and turn it into a real story. He wasn't elected to the HHOF just for getting the occasional scoop and antagonizing people, he's genuinely a great columnist, if a bit of a dick.
 
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nyr2k2 said:
I liked what JD had to say. The development coaches that they'll have. that's a good concept and I hope it works in practice.

Honestly, though, I don't think much of the other stuff he said was anything different than what we were trying before. The coach doesn't need experience, winning is important but it's more about developing the kids, it's great to have a team loaded with prospects but you have to balance that with good, established, veteran presence, etc. This is not really a new philosophy here.

I guess my hope is just that the execution is better; we had good character veterans like Holland, Butler, Beleskey, O'Donnell, Brickley, and so on. It just didn't work out. McCambridge was a fairly young coach who had some success previously and was known to be liked by his players. I mean, we've been trying what JD is describing, I guess the talent evaluation, both in terms of the coaching and the veteran players, generally hasn't been there. I don't see a whole lot that's revelatory in what JD is talking about, though (other than the development coaches).
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We're discussing this in two different threads now, but my sense is that Drury's intentions and the follow-through from management above were not necessarily the same. There's more that goes into this than just a couple of personnel decisions.

How are the locker rooms in HFD? The practice facilities? What kind of attention do the players get to ongoing skills development, diet monitoring, physical training? Are the physical training regimens modern, or are they developed by "old-school" guys who are still using methodologies from 20 years ago? What kind of data analysis are they using on guys outside of the NHL level? What kind of conditions do the players experience on the road?

It's not enough to hire a young, approachable coach and/or vets with good reputations. Issues like those above – and more – go toward developing a positive environment for growth. And there are tangible benefits to doing them well, not just in player development, but in organizational reputation/prospects' willingness to sign with the Rangers (UDFAs) and spend time in HFD (international players with European out clauses). But they all cost money. And if you've got cigar-chompin' "ah, it was good enough for me, just be grateful to go out there and play" types signing the contracts and cutting the checks, it's easy to see how they might be neglected.
 
I'm very bullish on this organization. Outside of some weird moves like taking a goalie in the 2nd round they've mostly done very well. Even the Zucc trade looks great right now. We were one goal from a guaranteed 1st and it's probably a decent shot he resigns there. If he doesn't it still looks like a good trade because neither condition was a long shot. It just didn't work out. A GM can't tell the future when putting in these conditions.
 
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Brooklyn Rangers Fan said:
We're discussing this in two different threads now, but my sense is that Drury's intentions and the follow-through from management above were not necessarily the same. There's more that goes into this than just a couple of personnel decisions.

How are the locker rooms in HFD? The practice facilities? What kind of attention do the players get to ongoing skills development, diet monitoring, physical training? Are the physical training regimens modern, or are they developed by "old-school" guys who are still using methodologies from 20 years ago? What kind of data analysis are they using on guys outside of the NHL level? What kind of conditions do the players experience on the road?

It's not enough to hire a young, approachable coach and/or vets with good reputations. Issues like those above – and more – go toward developing a positive environment for growth. And there are tangible benefits to doing them well, not just in player development, but in organizational reputation/prospects' willingness to sign with the Rangers (UDFAs) and spend time in HFD (international players with European out clauses). But they all cost money. And if you've got cigar-chompin' "ah, it was good enough for me, just be grateful to go out there and play" types signing the contracts and cutting the checks, it's easy to see how they might be neglected.
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To the stuff in bold, I don't really have any idea. However, Hartford has been in the cross-hairs of professional reporters and bloggers alike, so I suspect that if there was some type of massive deficiency down there, we'd have known about it. And it's not as if we haven't had guys come through Hartford over the past several years to make an impact in the NHL. I mean it was in this decade that Hartford was a franchise that would make the playoffs almost every single year. I have a hard time believing that around 2012, Glen and his guys just suddenly decided to stop caring about or investing in Hartford. That doesn't really make any sense. I think what happened is that things got stale with Gernander and then we went through another period of a barren farm, and things just got really bad.

So, while your theory/suggestion that the front office just decided--either intentionally or through inattentiveness, to stop investing in Hartford--is certainly possible, I don't think it's that likely. I have a really hard time believing that such neglect would not be mentioned, be it by one of the beat writers, an in-tune blogger, or the guys over at Howlings who report on some of the silliest minutiae around the Pack. Whenever someone writes about the failings in Hartford, it's always about, "They need to sign more vets!" (debatable) or, "The coaching sucks!" (possible) and "Drury is asleep at the wheel!" (not true). The only evidence I've really seen of a questionable infrastructure arrangement is the lack of goaltending coaches, but we don't really know why that is--Allaire may have said he prefers to be the only voice and someone stupidly deferred to him or something. It may not be due to neglect.

We'll see how it all turns out. I'm just curious to see, with a potential influx of young players next season, what the response will be if Hartford struggles again.
 
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Leetch3 said:
saying they didn't care would be wrong...but I'm not sure that you can say that they gave it the importance/priority it deserves
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I still don’t really see any evidence of that either though. JDs Hartford plan isn’t really any different of what was already being done there. The thing JD can help with is he’s done this before, where this has been Drury’s first year+ as a GM in any sort of fashion.
 
nyr2k2 said:
Eh he writes great stuff like this pretty regularly. Most of what gets attention is the more controversial, "hot take" stuff. Brooks is an extremely talented writer who knows how to conduct an interview and turn it into a real story. He wasn't elected to the HHOF just for getting the occasional scoop and antagonizing people, he's genuinely a great columnist, if a bit of a dick.
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Brooks is Brooks, but I read the post as this being his best article because of JDs comments. I.e, it's more about JD and the club saying what we've said here for a while as opposed to anything Brooks did.
 
nyr2k2 said:
To the stuff in bold, I don't really have any idea. However, Hartford has been in the cross-hairs of professional reporters and bloggers alike, so I suspect that if there was some type of massive deficiency down there, we'd have known about it. And it's not as if we haven't had guys come through Hartford over the past several years to make an impact in the NHL. I mean it was in this decade that Hartford was a franchise that would make the playoffs almost every single year. I have a hard time believing that around 2012, Glen and his guys just suddenly decided to stop caring about or investing in Hartford. That doesn't really make any sense. I think what happened is that things got stale with Gernander and then we went through another period of a barren farm, and things just got really bad.

So, while your theory/suggestion that the front office just decided--either intentionally or through inattentiveness, to stop investing in Hartford--is certainly possible, I don't think it's that likely. I have a really hard time believing that such neglect would not be mentioned, be it by one of the beat writers, an in-tune blogger, or the guys over at Howlings who report on some of the silliest minutiae around the Pack. Whenever someone writes about the failings in Hartford, it's always about, "They need to sign more vets!" (debatable) or, "The coaching sucks!" (possible) and "Drury is asleep at the wheel!" (not true). The only evidence I've really seen of a questionable infrastructure arrangement is the lack of goaltending coaches, but we don't really know why that is--Allaire may have said he prefers to be the only voice and someone stupidly deferred to him or something. It may not be due to neglect.

We'll see how it all turns out. I'm just curious to see, with a potential influx of young players next season, what the response will be if Hartford struggles again.
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Eh, there's a difference between totally neglecting it and simply not doing it RIGHT. And the thing is, I don't think one (e.g. a blogger) knows the difference unless they've seen/experienced it. I mean, just as an obvious example, take the locker room. Is a blogger really going to notice the difference between a room last saw a major renovation several decades ago but has been well maintained, and one that's been ripped out and redone in the last 3-5 years? And even if they did, are they then going to have a sense of how that pairs with off-ice attention, not just from coaches but also from ops people helping with finding housing, managing expenses, etc. to give a much better overall experience to the player?

Again, being a Nets fan offers a unique experience on this: I'm sure the Knicks' Westchester facility and support staff are fine. In fact, they're probably better than fine; they're probably good. But the Nets have a reputation throughout the league as having one of the best, if not THE best facilities and development/organizational/etc. staff in the entire NBA. It's a large part of the reason FAs suddenly want to come to Brooklyn, and also why the team saw a SLEW of guys from their 2nd tier of assistants and back office personnel poached as soon as they were bounced from the POs.
 
Brooklyn Rangers Fan said:
Eh, there's a difference between totally neglecting it and simply not doing it RIGHT. And the thing is, I don't think one (e.g. a blogger) knows the difference unless they've seen/experienced it. I mean, just as an obvious example, take the locker room. Is a blogger really going to notice the difference between a room last saw a major renovation several decades ago but has been well maintained, and one that's been ripped out and redone in the last 3-5 years? And even if they did, are they then going to have a sense of how that pairs with off-ice attention, not just from coaches but also from ops people helping with finding housing, managing expenses, etc. to give a much better overall experience to the player?

Again, being a Nets fan offers a unique experience on this: I'm sure the Knicks' Westchester facility and support staff are fine. In fact, they're probably better than fine; they're probably good. But the Nets have a reputation throughout the league as having one of the best, if not THE best facilities and development/organizational/etc. staff in the entire NBA. It's a large part of the reason FAs suddenly want to come to Brooklyn, and also why the team saw a SLEW of guys from their 2nd tier of assistants and back office personnel poached as soon as they were bounced from the POs.
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I understand where you're coming from, and I obviously can't completely discount the possibility because, as I said, I just don't know. It just seems hard for me to imagine that we would have some sort of crumbling infrastructure down there or we were seriously lagging behind other organizations in what our AHL affiliate offered and no one would have found out about it, be it through a former player saying something, a current player saying something, the journos that have covered the AHL and Hartford specifically for many years observing things, etc.

And again--it was pretty recent that Hartford was a perennial playoff team. This was under Slat's watch. It seems a bit implausible to me that an organization known for taking care of guys at the NHL level, with a very competitive AHL franchise, would suddenly and completely neglect the guys in the AHL. Yeah, Slats is old, but there's a ton of old guys running clubs in the NHL. We brought in guys like Ortmeyer, Malcolm, Leetch, Richards, Graves, etc., specifically to help develop the younger guys and Hartford guys in particular. I would be shocked if they saw a bad situation and didn't try to correct it, and that if they did bring it up, the Rangers wouldn't address it. The XL Center is old but hardly a dump, and was renovated within the last ten years with new locker rooms and technical stuff (this is not on the Rangers, but worth noting).

Just seems, to me anyway, that if there were some systemic issues putting Hartford at a disadvantage, someone would have said something over the past six or seven years.
 
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nyr2k2 said:
Eh he writes great stuff like this pretty regularly. Most of what gets attention is the more controversial, "hot take" stuff. Brooks is an extremely talented writer who knows how to conduct an interview and turn it into a real story. He wasn't elected to the HHOF just for getting the occasional scoop and antagonizing people, he's genuinely a great columnist, if a bit of a dick.
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I didn’t mean in those terms really... I respect Larry even when he goes off the rails for clickbait pieces.

This was a real article tho and wasn’t tinged (or tainted dep on who u are & feel about him) with his own thoughts and beliefs about what should be done... this was a truly insightful piece based on an interview. Like Larry went old school for this and kept it simple.

I found it refreshing.
 
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nyr2k2 said:
To the stuff in bold, I don't really have any idea. However, Hartford has been in the cross-hairs of professional reporters and bloggers alike, so I suspect that if there was some type of massive deficiency down there, we'd have known about it. And it's not as if we haven't had guys come through Hartford over the past several years to make an impact in the NHL. I mean it was in this decade that Hartford was a franchise that would make the playoffs almost every single year. I have a hard time believing that around 2012, Glen and his guys just suddenly decided to stop caring about or investing in Hartford. That doesn't really make any sense. I think what happened is that things got stale with Gernander and then we went through another period of a barren farm, and things just got really bad.

So, while your theory/suggestion that the front office just decided--either intentionally or through inattentiveness, to stop investing in Hartford--is certainly possible, I don't think it's that likely. I have a really hard time believing that such neglect would not be mentioned, be it by one of the beat writers, an in-tune blogger, or the guys over at Howlings who report on some of the silliest minutiae around the Pack. Whenever someone writes about the failings in Hartford, it's always about, "They need to sign more vets!" (debatable) or, "The coaching sucks!" (possible) and "Drury is asleep at the wheel!" (not true). The only evidence I've really seen of a questionable infrastructure arrangement is the lack of goaltending coaches, but we don't really know why that is--Allaire may have said he prefers to be the only voice and someone stupidly deferred to him or something. It may not be due to neglect.

We'll see how it all turns out. I'm just curious to see, with a potential influx of young players next season, what the response will be if Hartford struggles again.
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I'm pretty much in agreement with almost everything you've said, but I don't know where the idea that there is no goaltending coach in Hartford came from. According to the Wolfpack website Eric Raymond has been the goaltending coach for 4 years.

I don't get to see any games, but I do read Howlings and recall that Raymond started working full time in 2018-2019. He also has a long history with Benoit Allaire and survived the housecleaning at the end of the season.

Overall, I think the biggest problem the Wolfpack have had over the last 5-6 seasons is a lack of talent. That's changing and the benefits should be obvious soon, given the talent that's now in the system.
 
Brooklyn Ranger said:
I'm pretty much in agreement with almost everything you've said, but I don't know where the idea that there is no goaltending coach in Hartford came from. According to the Wolfpack website Eric Raymond has been the goaltending coach for 4 years.

I don't get to see any games, but I do read Howlings and recall that Raymond started working full time in 2018-2019. He also has a long history with Benoit Allaire and survived the housecleaning at the end of the season.

Overall, I think the biggest problem the Wolfpack have had over the last 5-6 seasons is a lack of talent. That's changing and the benefits should be obvious soon, given the talent that's now in the system.
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never heard of raymond before this post but he seems to fit the role and is a benny guy...but i'm not sure if he's full time. he split time between hartford and halifax thru 2017-18. and 2018-19 he was also a goalie coach at mcgill university.
 
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Leetch3 said:
never heard of raymond before this post but he seems to fit the role and is a benny guy...but i'm not sure if he's full time. he split time between hartford and halifax thru 2017-18. and 2018-19 he was also a goalie coach at mcgill university.
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I read a long article on Raymond last year sometime (probably on Howlings). Not really sure though about his status--it doesn't mention whether he's full time on the Wolfpack website.
 
Brooklyn Ranger said:
I'm pretty much in agreement with almost everything you've said, but I don't know where the idea that there is no goaltending coach in Hartford came from. According to the Wolfpack website Eric Raymond has been the goaltending coach for 4 years.

I don't get to see any games, but I do read Howlings and recall that Raymond started working full time in 2018-2019. He also has a long history with Benoit Allaire and survived the housecleaning at the end of the season.

Overall, I think the biggest problem the Wolfpack have had over the last 5-6 seasons is a lack of talent. That's changing and the benefits should be obvious soon, given the talent that's now in the system.
Click to expand...
There is a goaltending coach in Hartford now. That's what I was saying--prior to last season, there wasn't. Then they hired Raymond to work there full time and Jeff Malcolm, who had recently retired, to work as more of a roving instructor. The fact that we only employed one goaltending coach (Allaire) for the whole organization was the one thing I thought you could definitely say was neglectful, or a sign of poor organizational infrastructure.
 
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nyr2k2 said:
There is a goaltending coach in Hartford now. That's what I was saying--prior to last season, there wasn't. Then they hired Raymond to work there full time and Jeff Malcolm, who had recently retired, to work as more of a roving instructor. The fact that we only employed one goaltending coach (Allaire) for the whole organization was the one thing I thought you could definitely say was neglectful, or a sign of poor organizational infrastructure.
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is he full time though? Eliteprospects.com and the website for mcgill unversity say he's the goalie coach at mcgill last season.
 
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Leetch3 said:
is he full time though? Eliteprospects.com and the website for mcgill unversity say he's the goalie coach at mcgill last season.
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Not sure, but it would seem strange that someone with that high of a juniors goalie coach profile would coach college rather than professionally. Here's his description from the Wolf Pack website:

Hockey Staff | Hartford Wolf Pack

Wolf Pack goaltending coach Eric Raymond is in his fourth season with the New York Rangers organization in 2019-20.
Raymond works in partnership with New York Rangers assistant coach and goaltending coach Benoit Allaire, assisting him with goaltender development, a working relationship that spans over 30 years.
In addition to his experience with the Ranger organization, Raymond spent eight seasons (2010-11 through 2017-18) as goaltending coach of the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Raymond helped guide the Mooseheads to a Memorial Cup championship in 2012-13, a campaign in which Halifax went 58-6-3-1 and also captured the QMJHL regular-season and playoff (President’s Cup) titles. That team’s number-one netminder, Zach Fucale, then went on to become the first goaltender selected in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, picked 36th overall by the Montreal Canadiens.
Raymond, a 47-year-old Montreal native, also has had significant international coaching success, having been on the staff of the Gold Medal-winning Canadian team at the 2018 World Junior Hockey Championship. With that squad, Raymond mentored backstops Carter Hart and Colton Point.
In 11 total years coaching in the QMJHL, Raymond developed several goalies for the Canadian National Under-18 and Under-20 teams. He also won the President’s Cup as a goaltender himself twice, with the Laval Titan in 1989-90 and Verdun College-Francais in 1991-92, both times with Allaire as his goaltending coach.
Raymond enjoyed a 16-year pro playing career, which included 33 AHL games with the Fredericton Canadiens and Rochester Americans. He also saw action in the International Hockey League, ECHL, Colonial Hockey League and Central Hockey League, before spending time with the Canadian National Team and then heading overseas for the last 11 seasons of his career. Those included one year in England, one in Germany and nine seasons in France. He won back-to-back French championships in 2003-04 and 2004-05, with Rouen.
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