Sather Speaks

[Baby Punisher]

I recall a very rare interview that Sather gave to Mike & the Mad dog in 2003 or 04' Mike pressed him on the farm system & prospects & Sather who was clearly annoyed replied, "look when I got here there was nothing here, nothing at all." Sather started from scratch. All the complaining about how he bought this one & over paid for that one & allowed Messier to run wild is 20/20 vision in hindsight.


If you followed the team closely back than it was pretty obvious what was going on. I think nwe would have had more sucess early on if we had picked up Jagr in 01' instead of Lindros. Lindros gave it his all when he was here & I came to respect him as a player on the Rangers but, he was a shell of what he once was.

 

[Tawnos]

I recall a very rare interview that Sather gave to Mike & the Mad dog in 2003 or 04' Mike pressed him on the farm system & prospects & Sather who was clearly annoyed replied, "look when I got here there was nothing here, nothing at all." Sather started from scratch. All the complaining about how he bought this one & over paid for that one & allowed Messier to run wild is 20/20 vision in hindsight.


If you followed the team closely back than it was pretty obvious what was going on. I think nwe would have had more sucess early on if we had picked up Jagr in 01' instead of Lindros. Lindros gave it his all when he was here & I came to respect him as a player on the Rangers but, he was a shell of what he once was.

The Rangers roster construction was awful at that time. Just awful. And you know what? There was still nothing there by the time Sather gave that annoyed answer in an interview. By the time the firesale came, the farm system was just as bad as, if not worse than, it was when Sather arrived.

It wasn't so much that his individual moves were such a big problem. I mean, Bouchard, Fata, Samuelsson for Kovalev? Do it every time. Ulanov, Novak and a 1st for Bure? Do it every time. The problem is that there was no roster plan. There was no system. There was no accountability. There was no player development. It isn't about the individual moves, or the individual players he brought in, as much as Bobby Holik was never going to be a first line solution. In the right environment, every one of those moves should have been good. The organization was a complete disaster. It wasn't until Sather started surrounding himself with quality people that the team turned around.

 

[vipernsx]

Not really. Injuries play a factor, a large one. Look at the health of the last few cup winners. It's near perfect. None of them were missing top pairing defenseman or had three of their top-6 wingers severely injured.

Which explains why they added as much depth as possible during the offseason.

 

[broadwayblue]

Which explains why they added as much depth as possible during the offseason.

I'm not sure how adding depth is a replacement for not having your top guys injured.

Sure, it's nice to be able to plug a legit #6 dman in the lineup when you have an injury, but that doesn't replace a #2.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

So, the bottom line with Sather is:

1. Its all about winning
2. Its all about having a homegrown core

Well, he hasnt met high standards when it comes to either of those qualifications. 1 trip to the conference finals in 13 years, and roster that has some homegrown core components but continually needs imported high end offensive producers.

This is what aggravates me about him -- it seems everyone is subject to his lofty standards except for Glen Sather.

 

[OverTheCap]

So, the bottom line with Sather is:

1. Its all about winning
2. Its all about having a homegrown core

Well, he hasnt met high standards when it comes to either of those qualifications. 1 trip to the conference finals in 13 years, and roster that has some homegrown core components but continually needs imported high end offensive producers.

This is what aggravates me about him -- it seems everyone is subject to his lofty standards except for Glen Sather.

Agreed.

And if Sather's explanation for the why the team failed last year was due to injuries, then why was the coach canned? Once again he is showing he really has his finger on the pulse of the team. I won't even get into the argument that even if this team was completely healthy it's questionable that they would reach the finals.

 

[Trxjw]

Sather does a great job of making himself look like a genius simply because he had the best players in the world fall into his lap. He caught lightning in a bottle with the Oilers and has milked that success for his entire career. Draft your core? More like draft your core so you can trade them for stars.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Sather does a great job of making himself look like a genius simply because he had the best players in the world fall into his lap. He caught lightning in a bottle with the Oilers and has milked that success for his entire career. Draft your core? More like draft your core so you can trade them for stars.

Agreed. The 80's were a long, long time ago. The man is considered a hockey legend because of stuff that happened over 25 years ago. Doesnt stop him from still talking like a big shot despite a record of failure that far outweighs his timeframe of success.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Agreed.

And if Sather's explanation for the why the team failed last year was due to injuries, then why was the coach canned? Once again he is showing he really has his finger on the pulse of the team. I won't even get into the argument that even if this team was completely healthy it's questionable that they would reach the finals.

I guess Tortorella's militant behavior and system is what caused all those injuries, like how he made Staal's eye more susceptible to being hit by a puck.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Which explains why they added as much depth as possible during the offseason.

The reason they added depth this offseason is because teams need depth. They didnt add depth to guard against injuries.

This roster is still a house of cards. If Lundqvist, McDonagh, or Nash get hurt, its curtains for this bunch no matter how much depth they have

 

[RangerBoy]

Tortorella was fired because the veteran Ranger players grew tired of his act. Asham said so about a month ago. People are still hung up on Torts? Amazing. He was also fired because there was an issue with style of play. Management wants a little more tempo while Torts wants to block shots. Guys like Torts aren't long term guys. The players get sick of the act in due time.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Tortorella was fired because the veteran Ranger players grew tired of his act. Asham said so about a month ago. People are still hung up on Torts? Amazing. He was also fired because there was an issue with style of play. Management wants a little more tempo while Torts wants to block shots. Guys like Torts aren't long term guys. The players get sick of the act in due time.

Im not hung up on Torts. What I am hung up on is the continuous disconnect between what Sather thinks his rosters can do vs. what his coaches think his rosters can do.

 

[Crease]

Draft your core? More like draft your core so you can trade them for stars.

That's not really Sather's MO though. Going back to 2000 the only trades Sather made that meets this description was Nash for Dubinsky/Anisimov+ and maybe Lindros for Hlavac/Johnsson+.

Sather didn't give up anything of value (at the time or in retrospect) for Bure, Jagr. He gave up some value for Dunham but he had really no choice at the time.

 

[RangerBoy]

The Rangers performance in game 3 of the Boston series was unacceptable. The team came out flat. Their PP was a disgrace in that game. Pierre McGuire was about to jump over the boards and grab the board from Sullivan to inform the players on how to enter the zone and set to the PP. The players had tuned Torts out already. It was time for him to go. Then Torts admitted at the end of the series that certain players should have been used in different situations and he did a poor job preparing the team. His personnel choices were weird. One game John Moore is on the PP and then he never plays on it again. Kreider goes from a healthy scratch to scoring the GWG in OT. Kreider has 6 playoff goals and can't get on the ice.

 

[OverTheCap]

Im not hung up on Torts. What I am hung up on is the continuous disconnect between what Sather thinks his rosters can do vs. what his coaches think his rosters can do.

Yup, the coaches are the ones who continually pay the price for Sather's mediocre/poorly constructed teams. Already the pressure is on AV rather than Sather to turn this roster into a high-scoring team, despite the fact that there is only one player that has scored 30+ goals in a season (only 3 have scored 20 or more goals in a season).

The disconnect was on display during AV's press conference when Sather was talking about winning games 6-5 while AV was advocating a more measured approach that emphasizes both defense and offense.

 

[bobbop]

When Sather first got to NY, I think he felt the team could be patched together and have a deep playoff run or two while he fixed the infrastructure. He has from day one talked about putting together a core of young players and letting them grow together. Of course, he didn't do that very well for the first few years he was here and a very bad break (Dan Blackburn) along the way didn't help. I hope we don't become like the Bruins of the late 70s and 80s. Always very good, but never good enough.

 

[Trxjw]

That's not really Sather's MO though. Going back to 2000 the only trades Sather made that meets this description was Nash for Dubinsky/Anisimov+ and maybe Lindros for Hlavac/Johnsson+.

Sather didn't give up anything of value (at the time or in retrospect) for Bure, Jagr. He gave up some value for Dunham but he had really no choice at the time.

That's fair to say. I was trying to say that he's done a lousy job of identifying and keeping said 'core' but admittedly my disdain for him got in the way of my thought process.

While he may not have dealt the core away per se, he has certainly uprooted much of it in one way or another. Tyutin was dealt because Redden was about to be signed. Korpikoski was dealt to bring in 'more offense' that played 50 games here. Rozsival was dealt for a guy who spent all of 40 games with us. He let Orr wa;l so he could bring in an endless cycle of useless, more expensive goons who never made an impact here. Not to mention the countless other mercenaries he's brought in that have come and gone with little positive effect.

Point being, this guy has little idea how to actually assemble a team. He has little patience and changes his mind like he changes his pants.

 

[Ola]

Time will come eventually for Slats too if we don't perform.

This is how the land lies:
1. We rebuild from 05 up until the Nash trade basically. Some will argue the term rebuild, but I have a hard time seing how it could be labled as anything else than a rebuild.

2. In 2012 we end up in a situation where we have a 1 or 2 year window to contend in before our current core rapidly grow alot more expensive. This is what we have built for. The team can be tweaked from now on, but not dramatically improved.

We especially go great lengths to give our coach exactly the type of players he wants.

3. During the 2012/13 we look like sheit. Not only are we a joke to everyone that watch us play; the most boring team in hockey, the worst passing team in hockey, bottom 30 PP and what not; we aren't even that good defensively. We are an extreme defensiveminded team that constantly breaks down defensively and give up a ton of prime scoring chances. We wear tremendously on our players with the style we play.

We end up at a position where we really only could do two things: 1) Admit that what we are doing is not working and sell everyone off and start from scratch again, or 2) look at the man behind the bench.

We opted for 2). We can't expect AV to work miricles in 1 year with Torts' leftovers. But if we don't come close in the coming years, this is not working. It will not become dramatically better in 4-5 years.

Then Slats will be held accountable.

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Time will come eventually for Slats too if we don't perform.

This is how the land lies:
1. We rebuild from 05 up until the Nash trade basically. Some will argue the term rebuild, but I have a hard time seing how it could be labled as anything else than a rebuild.

2. In 2012 we end up in a situation where we have a 1 or 2 year window to contend in before our current core rapidly grow alot more expensive. This is what we have built for. The team can be tweaked from now on, but not dramatically improved.

We especially go great lengths to give our coach exactly the type of players he wants.

3. During the 2012/13 we look like sheit. Not only are we a joke to everyone that watch us play; the most boring team in hockey, the worst passing team in hockey, bottom 30 PP and what not; we aren't even that good defensively. We are an extreme defensiveminded team that constantly breaks down defensively and give up a ton of prime scoring chances. We wear tremendously on our players with the style we play.

We end up at a position where we really only could do two things: 1) Admit that what we are doing is not working and sell everyone off and start from scratch again, or 2) look at the man behind the bench.

We opted for 2). We can't expect AV to work miricles in 1 year with Torts' leftovers. But if we don't come close in the coming years, this is not working. It will not become dramatically better in 4-5 years.

Then Slats will be held accountable.

If he hasnt been held accountable through now, he won't be. Period. The guy is 70 years old. Hes not getting fired.

All we can hope for is that he relinquishes power to a qualified guy like Gorton, and that Dolan doesnt get too heavily involved in the process - because then we'd end up with a disaster like Brian Burke.

 

[RangerBoy]

The Korpikoski trade was brutal. Enver Lisin sucked. Not that Korpikoski has developed into what Maloney thought he was going to be but Lisin couldn't play. Nice kid. Torts treated him badly but he couldn't play in the NHL. Maloney feel in love with Korp in the U18 and that was it.

 

[eco's bones]

Some of these egos are very defensive about themselves. Torts came in ******** all over Renney about how the team wasn't in shape--blah, blah, blah. Sather is the same way. It's all on Neil Smith--when where the problem really started was with Jimmy Dolan--who in the pre cap years thought he could buy himself a Stanley Cup ala George Steinbrenner. That's ****ing why there wasn't any player development--that's why a washed up Messier returned--why we had to have Gretzky (which wasn't a bad thing), Lindros (with his 8 or more concussions), Lafontaine (another concussion away from la la land player), Bure (of the busted up knees) etc. etc. etc.

Sather of course is wily enough not to speak ill of his b-o-s-s who had him doing pretty much the same **** as he had Neil Smith doing before he fired him. This is not to say Smith doesn't have a % share of why the Rangers hit the skids but Sather really didn't start rebuilding the team until he was forced to by circumstance and a major circumstance was the salary cap. No longer was it possible anymore for Mr. Dolan to dream of buying a championship.

IMO if there is anyone who is pretty much blameless and does not get enough credit for the Rangers becoming a pretty good team again it's Tom Renney. The guy worked hard--did whatever the team asked him to do and almost always did it well and without blowing his own horn or pissing off the media (like Torts) for no good reason.

 

[Ola]

Looking more closely at the Korpikoski pick kind of shows what the draft is all about.

Was it a good pick or not?

Of the players drafted outside the top 5 in that 1st round, the following have made it and can be argued to be around or better than Korpi:
Ladislav Smid
Drew Stafford
Kyle Chipchura
Travis Zajac
Wojtek Wolski
Andrej Mezaros
Jeff Schultz
Mark Fistric
Mike Green
And the goalies Dubnyk and Schneider.

That is 11 of 25 picks, that made it.

Mike Green and Travis Zajac are of course heads and shoulders above Korpi. Very good arguments could of course be made of Stafford (despite his 18 pts in 46 games last season) and Mezaros being better than Korpi. The goalies? Its a bit like comparing appels and organges. No matter how you count, its hard to argue that Korpikoski doesn't rank worse than 6-7 out of 25 in that first round outside the top 5. If you take away the goalies, its top 4-5 of 23.

Many like to tear apart our track record in the first round, which could be warranted, but few point at someone like Korpikoski being a good pick despite him being a top 20-30% pick out of the entire first round outside the top 5.

 

[Jersey Girl]

Gotta love how Sather repeatedly goes on Edmonton radio, where he knows everyone will bow in honor of what happened 25-30 years ago, but can't find the time to come on radio here in New York. God forbid someone asks a question that doesn't fit the overall tone describing what a genius Sather is.

 

[Ola]

Also on Slats, I really disliked him for a long time. More so than I disliked Torts last season, and I think that went unnoticed for few.

But right now I can't say anything else than that I think Slats has made a solid job here in NY from tearing the team apart in 04' up until now. I have one big issue with him right now, and that is his pro-scouting. I am going to look more closely into that and post something when I have time. But besides that area, I think he has done a very solid job.

One can point on Hank Lundqvist falling into his lapse. On Jagr. I think its luck and luck on both accounts, but we are talking about a time frame of 9 years here. Over 9 years, odds are pretty great that you will get a few of those as well as a few real buggers. That evens out.

Slats has stayed in there and built in the right direction. He hasn't been much of a visonary, which also might be argued to be a bit of a downside with him considering him having unlimited resources.

 

[RangerBoy]

Gotta love how Sather repeatedly goes on Edmonton radio, where he knows everyone will bow in honor of what happened 25-30 years ago, but can't find the time to come on radio here in New York. God forbid someone asks a question that doesn't fit the overall tone describing what a genius Sather is.

Sather went on the station in Edmonton to discuss the 25th anniversary of the Gretzky trade. When was the last time he was Edmonton radio? Or any radio station? The NY radio guys have no clue about the Rangers.