Confirmed with Link: Rangers Sign Brendan Smith (4 years x $4.35M)

[Ghost of jas]

Genuinely surprised how many people on main boards hate this signing and think we massively overpaid.

The main needs to look at the contracts of Orpik and MacDonald for overpayments. Look at what Russell and Lovejoy got. Smith is market value for a 2nd pairing Dman.

 

[Fugazy]

Tanking is not a good strategy in the NHL with the new draft lottery format.

Tanking works in the NBA (even with a lottery) since you basically cannot win without a mega elite player since one player had such a huge impact. And it can work in the NFL because of how quickly you can turn over the entire roster and the need to get yourself a tip flight qb.

It's not very effective in a league where even if you finish in dead last you still have a very reasonable chance to end up 4th ovr and where one player cannot completely make a team like a basketball player or a qb. Obvious exception being like a McDavid Eichel draft but that's an outlier and again with the new format nothing is guaranteed,

Long story short - don't tank. Try to win.

There's also much more parity in the NHL, especially in the playoffs. The NBA is so top heavy with teams that are capable of winning the title, and just this year we saw an 8 seed (Nashville) competing for the Cup. Always try to win.

 

[Leetch3]

calling 98-04 a rebuild is alternative facts. just because we sucked that doesn't mean we were rebuilding.

 

[Fugazy]

calling 98-04 a rebuild is alternative facts. just because we sucked that doesn't mean we were rebuilding.

Exactly. There was no direction for those teams and terrible decision making in the front office.

 

[Crease]

98 to 04 was, in the most generous terms, a failed retooling on the fly. Zero actual thought process or plan is probably closer to the truth. The deadline before the lockout was the cathartic fire sale fans had been clamoring years for. Josef Balej!

 

[Doctor King Schultz]

The main needs to look at the contracts of Orpik and MacDonald for overpayments. Look at what Russell and Lovejoy got. Smith is market value for a 2nd pairing Dman.

My issue with it is that Smith hasn't convinced me without any shadow of a doubt that he is a second pairing defenseman worth spending 4.35M in his 30 games plus playoffs.

 

[LORDE]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

Some of us remember. Some of us weren't even kids.

I agree that we got **** all out of that rebuild. It was and in memory STILL FUDGING BRUTAL.

That doesn't mean that's how it will go next time... and I'm not even saying we should.

Nearly as bad as trading GOD away for nothing is wasting this team's version of GOD's entire career never being quite good enough to get there. At least the God you speak of has a ring & knows what it's like to hold that Cup over his head in front of 18k screaming and crying people who just witnessed a moment they will never forget as long as they live and whom some (myself included) measure past events by (i.e. Before THE CUP or after)

 

[SingnBluesOnBroadway]

Yeah and probs for a cool million on a one year deal with NO NTC/NMC

And....?

 

[SingnBluesOnBroadway]

He was looking for like 3.25 at most when we traded for him, and I didn't even think he was worth 4m.
He was good in the playoffs (and somehow the coach stopped playing him as games went on) but before that he was just whatever, and I don't want to pay a whatever defensemen who the coach stops playing 4.35m for 4 years

That doesn't mean he's overpaid.

 

[Hire Sather]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

Holy hell I agree with everything here. I too can remember random games from the dark years. Honestly sometimes I wish I could find a video log of all those games just so I could go back and re-live my childhood a bit. I look back now and know it ****ing sucked, but at the time I loved it so much.

But yeah, Remember this post if we're having another good season (standings wise) and you rant about how much you hate the team

It's actually crazy to me that you feel this way because I have wanted to make this same rant to you (which would not have been as well laid out as you just did) when you've said how much you thought the team sucked over the last 2 seasons.

 

[SingnBluesOnBroadway]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

This is amazing.

 

[silverfish]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

The amount of praise that tanking and rebuilding gets around here is just off-the-charts absurd. It's glorified because people look at the Pens and the Blackhawks and the Kings and go: "wow, if we just had two years of top-5 picks, look at what we could be?"

Ignoring the Avs. Ignoring the Islanders. Ignoring the Oilers until the best player in the world fell into their laps, and they still haven't won ****, and may very well never do that. Ignoring the Sabres.

The same fans clamoring for a blow it up tank rebuild would be the first ones to complain about the Rangers sucking when in two years, we haven't won a cup.

 

[Trxjw]

The Rangers "rebuild" lasted like 18 months at best. The years leading up to the 04 fire sale wasn't a rebuild. It was just pure incompetence.

 

[silverfish]

The Rangers "rebuild" lasted like 18 months at best. The years leading up to the 04 fire sale wasn't a rebuild. It was just pure incompetence.

Would've been a lot longer had Hank not been Hank.

Think sometimes we forget that 05-06 team was projected to finish 30th in the league. Jagr/Straka/Nylander + Prucha, Rozsival, Malik, and of course Hank, had something to say about that though.

Damn. Rucinsky put up 55 points in 52 games that year I don't remember him being a huge factor at all. Eat your heart out, Stepan

 

[Brooklyn Rangers Fan]

Good grief, all these folks who started watching in the dark ages and they call it "having lived through a rebuild".

I started watching in the 80s. I saw the run-up with actual GOOD young players when the team had a clue about drafting. I saw some of them get moved in important deals that helped win in '94, I saw some of them get squandered in unnecessary deals. And then I saw utter mismanagement for years. That wasn't a rebuild. That was a team ignoring scouting and trying to buy it's way back into contention year after year until finally in '04 (a ****** year to draft) with a lockout looming they finally did a half-assed sell-off of over the hill players about 2-3 years too late. (And for the record, Brian Leetch is one of my all-time favorite Rangers but he was most definitely NOT God by the time they sold him.) There was no rhyme or reason, there was only Slats's arrogance (and before that, post '94, Messier's).

Trying to throw broken/past-their-prime Lindros, Bure (who I loved for that one brief glorious run), Fleury, Kamensky, etc., etc. and then failing your way to a 10th, 11th, 12th pick is NOT a rebuild. It's Sather spending half a decade trying to backup his boast from his days in Edmonton that if he had the Rangers' budget he'd win a cup every year.

As always, just to clarify, I'm not advocating tanking – but this core had a good 5 year window, they made the moves to supplement it, and fell just short. Time to (deliberately, intelligently) retool and develop a new core. BEFORE we find ourselves in another '04 situation.

 

[LORDE]

Good grief, all these folks who started watching in the dark ages and they call it "having lived through a rebuild".

I started watching in the 80s. I saw the run-up with actual GOOD young players when the team had a clue about drafting. I saw some of them get moved in important deals that helped win in '94, I saw some of them get squandered in unnecessary deals. And then I saw utter mismanagement for years. That wasn't a rebuild. That was a team ignoring scouting and trying to buy it's way back into contention year after year until finally in '04 (a ****** year to draft) with a lockout looming they finally did a half-assed sell-off of over the hill players about 2-3 years too late. (And for the record, Brian Leetch is one of my all-time favorite Rangers but he was most definitely NOT God by the time they sold him.) There was no rhyme or reason, there was only Slats's arrogance (and before that, post '94, Messier's).

Trying to throw broken/past-their-prime Lindros, Bure (who I loved for that one brief glorious run), Fleury, Kamensky, etc., etc. and then failing your way to a 10th, 11th, 12th pick is NOT a rebuild. It's Sather spending half a decade trying to backup his boast from his days in Edmonton that if he had the Rangers' budget he'd win a cup every year.

As always, just to clarify, I'm not advocating tanking – but this core had a good 5 year window, they made the moves to supplement it, and fell just short. Time to (deliberately, intelligently) retool and develop a new core. BEFORE we find ourselves in another '04 situation.

This. Exactly this

 

[Trxjw]

Would've been a lot longer had Hank not been Hank.

Think sometimes we forget that 05-06 team was projected to finish 30th in the league. Jagr/Straka/Nylander + Prucha, Rozsival, Malik, and of course Hank, had something to say about that though.

Damn. Rucinsky put up 55 points in 52 games that year I don't remember him being a huge factor at all. Eat your heart out, Stepan

Sure, but Hank was Hank, and Jagr was Jagr, and Nylander was Nylander, etc.

It's like Sather had ADD. "I'm rebuilding this tea-- Ooohh, Jaromir Jagr and his buddies! I'm a lion, guys!"

 

[CommaSynapse]

The main needs to look at the contracts of Orpik and MacDonald for overpayments. Look at what Russell and Lovejoy got. Smith is market value for a 2nd pairing Dman.

Exactly. Smith is an awful albatross but Russell/Sekera/Lovejoy/etc. are okay? Come on.

It's just an excuse to hate on the Rangers.

You can't go all youth. Look how that worked for Edmonton the first time around. We're working in youth alongside vets. McDonagh, Staal, and Smith offset Skjei, DeAngelo, and Bereglazov/Pionk/Graves.

 

[GeorgeKaplan]

His career PO FO% is 41, that's a swing of 18 per 100. And he wins even less when it matters. How many times in the POs have we been hemmed in our zone the entire last 2 minutes of a game when leading or tied? Almost every OTT game this year if you need a refresher.

FOs don't matter when you're talking about 48vs52, but every % lost goes against your favor exponentially. When you're bottom of the barrel in the stat it makes a pretty decent difference.

The most important thing about face offs is what the team does directly after winning/losing one. Losing a face off doesn't mean you're not going to touch the puck for minutes on end, that's what happens when you have a team that plays terrible defense, like the Rangers did all year. You want to put 2 defensemen who can't make a pass on the ice in the last 2 minutes of the game? Huge chance they'd still be pinned in the zone even if they won the face off. It's absolutely ridiculous to think they lost the Ottawa series because they lost a few face offs.

 

[Hire Sather]

Yeah it wasn't a rebuild from 98-04, poor word choice there by MH. It was just terrible hockey and Sather not learning from his mistakes. We do sometimes forget though that Sather was only there for half of that missed playoff streak. Neil Smith didn't exactly leave the cubbard full on his way out.

My point is growing up during that makes me appreciate what we've got every season from 2005 on. I don't need to win a cup to enjoy a season. I'd like one eventually, but being a contender every year is fun.. even though you could argue we were a pretender last season.

It is time to retool as we've already started. That doesn't mean we have to trade every god damn good player on the roster. If you trade McDonagh you never know when we'll get another McDonagh. You can't just trade everyone away and assume every draft pick/prospect you get will work out.

We can retool and 2 years from now guys like McD and Zucc can be part of that winning team.

 

[offdacrossbar]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

blow it up

nice rant. feel better ?

this team isnt nearly as bad as many here make it out to be.

we arent that far from legit contenders and really we were better last season than i though we would be.

looks who's played the most playoff games the last 5 seasons ? surprise !

this isnt a tear it down, blow it up, tank team. never will be.

some how JG has managed to get younger and better while staying competitive and do all that with girardi and staal and nash draining $$ and playing at or below league average production.

with a few more smart moves, we can return to the playoffs again and who knows once you get there.

the over reactors here are well.... over reacting.

draft better, play the kids, sell high on the vets who are about to slide and most of all, keep the core together to maintain stability and chemistry. always have one eye on the future.

 

[NikC]

You haven't been through anything like that. Not even with the Mets.

You talk about not being satisfied with mediocrity. You know what I was satisfied with in 2002? Beating the Islanders. That was the highlight of my season. Not a SCF appearance, or a Derek Stepan OT winner in game 7, or knocking off Montreal. It was beating the Islanders in January.

Beating the Devils? You can forget that. I went five calendar years watching the Rangers not beat the Devils in a game. Five years. Sound like fun?

Nowadays we get mad that the team that finished 6th in scoring doesn't have enough offense. Papa Johns sponsors our three-goal games. You know who sponsored our three-goal games back then? The ****ing full moon because they happened twice a month.

I can vividly remember random regular season wins from 99, 2000, 2001. I was a little kid. That's how often we won - it was an event when we won a game.

We used to be on the national game on fox almost every weekend, and over the course of those six years, I think we won like five of those games, getting embarrassed on national tv, week in, week out.

There was one reason to keep coming back though. You don't remember Brian Leetch. Compared to Brian Leetch, Ryan McDonagh is the slime dripping out from underneath an alley dumpster. The guy was God. And we traded him. We traded God.

But surely, all my suffering was part of the process. We surely got a lot out of the constant lottery picks - 4th overall, 9th overall, 8th overall, 10th overall, 11th overall, 12th overall, and 6th overall in that order. Nope. We got GOD DAMN NOTHING out of it. Only one of those picks went on to even play a game for the Rangers.

The Leetch trade? What did we get back for God? Four guys who would never play for the Rangers, and a pick that turned into Lauri Korpikoski. Thanks for the memories, Brian.

In fact, only one single player -exactly one- drafted from 1998 to 2004 went on to become a major piece for the Rangers. Henrik Lundqivst. 7th round pick.

I'm so glad we had all those lottery picks. I'm so glad we traded our greatest ever player for more picks. I'm so glad we tanked for a 7th rounder. It turned into so much of substance. All the hype about rebuilding. Tank this and tear that down. The last time we rebuilt, I can count one, single, solitary FINGER what we got out of it.

And then we turned it around from the 2004 deadline to the start of the 2006 season. How? By bringing in Jagr, Straka, Nylander, Rozsival, and Malik. VETERANS who actually played in the NHL, so we could actually put a damn NHL team together.

I have seen the Rangers rebuild. It was a hopeless, funless, completely free of substance experience that left us WORSE OFF when we finished than when we started.

Don't tell me about the benefits of rebuilding until you've lived through a rebuild. Don't call this iteration of the Rangers "mediocre" until you've really been through something hard. What you've seen is ****ing Candyland in comparison. Until you've lived a rebuild, you have no idea how horrible it actually is and what a disaster it actually turns out to be.

Aside from your blasphemous comments (God's last name isn't "damn"), this is an entertaining story about what we veteran fans
Have endured at the hands of Sather, during his reign ...

As others already pointed out , these years reflect Sathers massive ego and budget, hapless trying to assemble a super team on the backs of stars passed their prime. We suffered for many reasons, but not because we were going through a rebuild. You don't know this?

When Sather finally conceded and sold off players.... we followed up the lockout with a Jagr era... rebuild? Lol gimme a break.
The last decade we watched this franchise try to capitalize on its star goalie. ... it hasn't been enough. ...

 

[GeorgeKaplan]

I've been saying this for a while, but for a rebuild to truly work, you need to be luckier in tanking at the right time/getting ping pong balls to bounce your way a few times than the luck a team needs to win a cup any given season

 

[ap215]

Good move.

 

[Hunter Gathers]

You care more about the team being watchable than the team winning. Thats fine, many people think like that, but I don't. We differ on this topic.

A few bad seasons is not a big deal to me.

You "differ" on the topic because one person (not you) understands it.