It kills me to say this, but the "classy" stuff is just nonsense.
Coming from a franchise that has won on Cup in the last 84 years, it's BS.
It's like someone from the Rangers looked at what the Yankees used to do under George (since they clearly are not doing this anymore under Hal), and said "we should use that kind of marketing to free agents too!"
Then decided the best way to back that up was to spend lots of money on player amenities and off-ice niceties, while still not fielding a winning product.
They only need to show loyalty to their own players who prove themselves as winners - guys like Messier, Leetch, who got them there. Ironically, those were the guys they didn't show loyalty to. Kreider is a tier below that, and he's the guy people are talkin about moving when IMO he's part of the solution, not the problem. They don't owe Goodrow anything. He didn't win us a single Cup. I don't care if he's liked in the room, he sucks, but if any org owes him loyalty it's Tampa, not us. And I'm getting really tired of acting like Zibanejad, who has played like steaming garbage this entire season except for a two week stretch in November, deserves to continue to be run out there 20 minutes a night and hop over the boards every time an opponent skates to the box when or dictate that him and Kreider play together.
Goodrow's contract (and the intention to sign him) is a big part of the reason Drury felt that Buchnevich had to be moved. Goodrow's contract is the single reason bringing back Tarasenko (an infinitely better player for what ended up being a little over a million more) - who wanted to stay and who scores goals including in the playoffs - wasn't really an option last offseason. Loyalty to Igor is killing this team, when they've never won anything with him, but yet they let Lundqvist walk at the end to keep both Igor and Georgiev instead of trading one of them (Georgiev) to help fix the problems up front or on D.
This is the franchise that traded Ratelle, traded Leetch, traded Park and Bathgate, moved on from Hadfield, let Graves play out the string on the San Jose Sharks, and clung to guys like Goodrow, Steve Eminger, Dan Girardi, Tanner Glass, and Marc Staal like they were/are multi-Cup winning Rangers when it was so obvious that those players had outlived any usefulness at the NHL level, and kicked Jim Ramsey to the curb like nothing after decades in his role. They kicked Gaborik, one of the few free agent signings that lived up to the money, to the curb half a season after a 40-goal campaign and offseason shoulder surgery and watched him destroy us in the 2014 Final, but held onto the ghost of Rick Nash for multiple seasons when it was obvious the guy was reduced to the rubble of a third line grinder even after he choked in multiple playoff years.
This "class" thing is a bunch of BS and always has been.
