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

[mas0764]

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.

It's certainly true that if you tank, you aren't guaranteed to get the top-talent generational player(s) you need for 2-3 years in a row to re-establish yourself as a powerhouse.

However, the Rangers would never be stuck at the bottom like the Avs, Islanders, Sabres, etc. Through the darkest Rangers years of 1999-2004, they never were picking in the top 5 every year. They were never that bad because they are always a destination for free agents. They were picking 6, 7, 10, 12. Not 2. Not 3. The one year they were fourth and picked Brendl, but didn't they trade up for that pick?

We wouldn't need the same lottery luck as a team like Edmonton to become a powerhouse again because as an organization, we have the resources to attract top free agents every year, including the college free agents and overseas players -- like Hayes, Vesey, Pionk, Gilmore, Bereglazov, etc. These players have been flocking to a Rangers team that is pretty full on talent. Imagine them coming to a team with openings in the top 6!

I am not currently advocating for a tank. I didn't want to go all out by trading for Eric Staal two deadlines ago, when it was clear we couldn't win, but I think a couple aggressive moves this offseason can have us right back in the mix. I also think we have a goalie of the future in our pipeline with Shestyorkin, so we don't have to operate like we have an end of the line drop dead date when Hank retires.

But I am saying.... if we did decide to strip down for a year, trade Nash, Henrik, Hayes, Staal, and McDonagh, and acquire a bunch of top picks, so we knew we'd finish bottom 3-5 in a year where the top 3 players were all super studs..... I wouldn't hate that either. We'd be back in the playoffs in no time with a Malkin or Eichel level player to add to a core of Vesey, Buch, Skjei, Miller, Day, Bereglazov, Pionk, Shestyorkin, etc.

 

[NikC]

Isn't the bottom line , the teams that win cups have top tier talent?

You need " gamechangers"... not just one, but several, PLUS the right support players.

Rangers can barely draft a top six forward let alone a top 3.

Tanking is no sure thing, but drafting high, consistently for a few years is a better route to a elite talent.

Rangers bet a lot on MSL... didn't work out... gonna be a while before we get another chance...

 

[GeorgeKaplan]

It's certainly true that if you tank, you aren't guaranteed to get the top-talent generational player(s) you need for 2-3 years in a row to re-establish yourself as a powerhouse.

However, the Rangers would never be stuck at the bottom like the Avs, Islanders, Sabres, etc. Through the darkest Rangers years of 1999-2004, they never were picking in the top 5 every year. They were never that bad because they are always a destination for free agents. They were picking 6, 7, 10, 12. Not 2. Not 3. The one year they were fourth and picked Brendl, but didn't they trade up for that pick?

We wouldn't need the same lottery luck as a team like Edmonton to become a powerhouse again because as an organization, we have the resources to attract top free agents every year, including the college free agents and overseas players -- like Hayes, Vesey, Pionk, Gilmore, Bereglazov, etc. These players have been flocking to a Rangers team that is pretty full on talent. Imagine them coming to a team with openings in the top 6!

I am not currently advocating for a tank. I didn't want to go all out by trading for Eric Staal two deadlines ago, when it was clear we couldn't win, but I think a couple aggressive moves this offseason can have us right back in the mix. I also think we have a goalie of the future in our pipeline with Shestyorkin, so we don't have to operate like we have an end of the line drop dead date when Hank retires.

But I am saying.... if we did decide to strip down for a year, trade Nash, Henrik, Hayes, Staal, and McDonagh, and acquire a bunch of top picks, so we knew we'd finish bottom 3-5 in a year where the top 3 players were all super studs..... I wouldn't hate that either. We'd be back in the playoffs in no time with a Malkin or Eichel level player to add to a core of Vesey, Buch, Skjei, Miller, Day, Bereglazov, Pionk, Shestyorkin, etc.

Would we attract free agents like Hayes, Vesey, Pionk, Gilmore, Bereglazov if we were a bottom of the league team though? For the college guys it seems like after every signing they're always citing how the Rangers are always in the thick of the playoff race. I know fans think 1st and 2nd round exits mean a team isn't a true contender and they're stuck being mediocre, but players always want a chance of making the playoffs, because anything really can happen once you get there, more now than in the entire history of the league

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

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.

Well said.

I think a lot of people are drawn to a rebuild because it is seemingly the only way the Rangers could acquire two pieces they've been missing since Messier and Leetch got old -- a game breaking center and defenseman. Every cup winner since the lockout (and before then, actually) has had at least one of those elements. The vast majority have had both. The Rangers had an admirable run over the last 5 years on the backs of depth and Lundqvist - but were Stepan and McDonagh striking fear in the hearts of their opponents?

Im not advocating tanking because theres a high probability you can strike out with a high pick or two, and I've been a fan of the Rangers long enough to know it'll never happen in the first place.

But theres also a very good chance the Rangers will toil in that good/very good zone with no championships if they don't secure a gamebreaking type of player or two.

 

[Glen Sathers Cigar]

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.

AMEN!

Tanking getting romanticized around here is insane to me. As if all teams that have tanked have gone on to win the cup, like it's guaranteed or something. People want to throw away what is already a good and young team just to tank. Quit your job just to buy some lottery tickets.

 

[Off Sides]

Put me with what BrooklynRangersFan and Bleed Ranger Blue said.

This core had their chances, They never put together a run that was good enough. They got close in the Finals but the Kings were just better. Last two playoffs not so close.

It does not have to be a tank, but they have to find some group of skaters both on F and D that can rival what these other teams have. No amount of UFAs or lateral trades is going to do that for them.

 

[Chaels Arms]

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.

I agree with the point of your post which is that actual rebuilding sucks and is not the guaranteed path to success that some here think it is. It's not like an algorithm where you type in rebuild + 3 years of awful play and end up with a championship.

I disagree that the dark ages Rangers ever intended to rebuild though. Like someone else said, they just sucked. Unintentionally.

 

[Dr. Ogrodnick]

We'll see what Shatty ends up signing for, but I rather pay 6×6.5 for shatty than 4×4.35 for Smith

 

[Badko]

Faceoffs have arguably no impact...

Absolutely one of the silliest things I've ever read on these boards and there's been a lot of silly statements. How can possession have no impact???

 

[GordonGecko]

Absolutely one of the silliest things I've ever read on these boards and there's been a lot of silly statements. How can possession have no impact???

Because Stepan is great and he says so he knows it

 

[orland]

We'll see what Shatty ends up signing for, but I rather pay 6×6.5 for shatty than 4×4.35 for Smith

Agree for the next few years but Shatty is going to get at least 6 years. Smith and Shatty are the same age. Beginning in years 3 or 4 they likely will be in the decline. Then you are stuck with an over the hill Shatty for 2 more years at 6.5 (kinda like Girardi/Staal).

Also Smith proved to be a good partner for Skjei. Shatty is an unknown given is washout with the Caps. Big upside on the Power Play but who knows how the remainder would pan out with him.

 

[silverfish]

Stepan produced more like a 32C in the stats and couldn't win a faceoff to save his life in the playoffs. If anything the culture on the team will be a lot better now

You know who was really good at faceoffs last year?

Brandon Pirri.

 

[Oscar Lindberg]

I get the argument for valuing faceoffs, but some of the best centers in the league are garbage at taking draws so....

 

[Boris Zubov]

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.

Frankly I find it amazing that anyone growing up & watching the team during the 97-04 Rangers era is even a fan. Hardcore ones at that.

I was 26 when that dark era started & it was beyond bad. Unwatchable. Like Machinehead so eloquently stated, it was torture watching us get embarrassed on Fox every Saturday afternoon until it continued on ABC. One of the few highlights over that time was seeing Cloutier beat up Soderstrom.

Not sure what was worse, the terrible play on the ice or the incompetence of the front office. Bad trades, bad signings, & awful drafts one after another for 10 years. It got to the point where I lost interest in the team & the NHL for 5-6 years. I'm surprised I came back as a fan after the cancelled season. Which leads me back to my original point of how amazing it is that a bunch of you guys who weren't lucky enough to see us win the cup & grew up during that 97-04 run became diehard fans. Kudos.

However, anyone who thinks we should tank & doesn't mind 2-3-4 lost seasons is missing the point. Those 4 seasons turn into 23 years really quickly. They turned into 54 years for another generation just as fast. Next year isn't guaranteed for any of us, especially for guys in their 70s & 80s who still bleed blue. Food for thought.

 

[silverfish]

I get the argument for valuing faceoffs, but some of the best centers in the league are garbage at taking draws so....

I like the people who argue the value of faceoffs, but totally devalue shot attempts. Those are my favorite people.

 

[JohnC]

I like the people who argue the value of faceoffs, but totally devalue shot attempts. Those are my favorite people.

Derek Stepan doesn't win enough of his faceoffs and for that he should ****ing hang

-melodramatic Ny sports fans

 

[Amazing Kreiderman]

I think it's hilarious that people crucify Stepan for his FO% but Hayes gets a pass whose percentage has been worse every year.

 

[Levitate]

I think Smith is going to be quite good for the Rangers but become the new whipping boy for a lot of people and every time he makes a mistake he'll be Poti'd mercilessly

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Frankly I find it amazing that anyone growing up & watching the team during the 97-04 Rangers era is even a fan. Hardcore ones at that.

I was 26 when that dark era started & it was beyond bad. Unwatchable. Like Machinehead so eloquently stated, it was torture watching us get embarrassed on Fox every Saturday afternoon until it continued on ABC. One of the few highlights over that time was seeing Cloutier beat up Soderstrom.

Not sure what was worse, the terrible play on the ice or the incompetence of the front office. Bad trades, bad signings, & awful drafts one after another for 10 years. It got to the point where I lost interest in the team & the NHL for 5-6 years. I'm surprised I came back as a fan after the cancelled season. Which leads me back to my original point of how amazing it is that a bunch of you guys who weren't lucky enough to see us win the cup & grew up during that 97-04 run became diehard fans. Kudos.

However, anyone who thinks we should tank & doesn't mind 2-3-4 lost seasons is missing the point. Those 4 seasons turn into 23 years really quickly. They turned into 54 years for another generation just as fast. Next year isn't guaranteed for any of us, especially for guys in their 70s & 80s who still bleed blue. Food for thought.

Ha. I know this isn't true, but my mind is convinced we did not win a single day game during those 7 years

 

[aufheben]

Why are we even talking about tanking? It's not happening. Download Eastside Hockey if you want to see the Rangers tank. I'm not trying to be rude, just stating the reality.

 

[Amazing Kreiderman]

I think Smith is going to be quite good for the Rangers but become the new whipping boy for a lot of people and every time he makes a mistake he'll be Poti'd mercilessly

2 years from now, fans will criticize Gorton for handing out that NTC

 

[Irishguy42]

Odd that the details of the NTC havent been disclosed yet. Normally the insiders are all over it.

 

[Levitate]

Why are we even talking about tanking? It's not happening. Download Eastside Hockey if you want to see the Rangers tank. I'm not trying to be rude, just stating the reality.

I feel the same way about the crazy trade proposals that have like 5 moving parts and 7 players changing teams

They aren't realistic, they don't happen. Teams almost 100% of the time just trade for the players they want, not for guys to then immediately flip to other teams. Vegas with their expansion draft selections is like the one exception to that and it's a reasonable exception

 

[Miamipuck]

You don't need to tank in the cap era. All you have to do is keep getting cost controlled talent and cull the roster as you go. I think Gorton gets that. He's done a decent job getting FA's and such when they didn't have top picks.

The **** if I want to tank and depend on 1.) winning the lottery 2.) have a generational talent fall into our laps. Basically, suck for 5-10 years and pray that the suck was long and deep enough for the series of events needed to happen, actually happen. Yeah nope.

That said, Smith was a decent signing, the NTC was limited which means a decent enough amount of teams if need be, and the length and amount isn't going to hamstring this team. Smith also doesn't duplicate anything they currently have on the roster. It's a solid deal in my opinion. I think Smith will be fine. I have to say some of the analysis on him is atrocious.

 

[Crease]

2 years from now, fans will criticize Gorton for handing out that NTC

Teams are very rarely stuck with players because of the clause. The practical effect of the clause is that it lowers the cap hit but also future trade value. For a team that intends to operate close to the cap ceiling, the clause is useful in that respect.