Some of you guys are stuck in a rut.
I think to some extent, what SOS said, holds very true about some fans on this board.
For some, there is an inherent underlying need to see change on a roster - any roster. When people allude to this "not being NHL '14" or "fantasy sports" it's brushed aside as some sort of grande hyperbole and joke. The truth is... it isn't a joke.
These players have lives, homes, families, ties to the city that they inhabit. When I come on here during the offseason, fans are full of 6-7 trade proposals at a time, claiming that the team would be better because of each.
In a team dynamic, familiarity and chemistry is KEY to team success. It's fundamental. Players grow emotional connections to one another, and in a sport like hockey, they eventually fight and go to war for each other.
2 months ago, I witnessed many fans on this board list maybe 8-9 players they thought should be moved by next year. Boyle, Moore, Girardi, Callahan, Del Zotto, Richards, Brassard, Pouloit, Stralman.
Some went further and began moving off Nash, Stepan, and Staal. And then the same fans complain that the team plays with emotional disconnect. That they don't stick up for one another. That they don't seem to care.
And, to make matters worse, nearly every deal was for prospects and picks - i.e. assets that are not only unproven but have a high historical probability of failure. And the justification and premise of this is either that our own players are lousy or that we need to prepare for the future. The funny this is that the future is uncertain and in such matters, the planning is a very imprecise art. And unfortunately, the Rangers track record with such tactics seems to be rather average, at best.
A smaller majority had rational solutions - like a moderate selling off of assets that aren't essential for our success. Which makes sense. But that has changed, even in those, recently.
As with most things in NY, the media got control of a story, and has beat it to death over the past few weeks and months. Naturally, a lot of our fans have eaten up the words of these makeshift journalists who mix fact with opinion, rumor with speculation, and have begun the perpetuating cycle of trading half our team away like (as SOS said) stocks.
From last Thursday, the media made the Callahan saga into something much more than what it was. Will Cally even be in practice? Is there a trade imminent? Rangers set a deadline at 2 PM for Cally to be traded. Etc. Half the board was nearly positive that he'd be gone by Friday. Yet, Friday came, and it may have been the most anticlimactic hours before a deadline known to our generation.
So where does this leave us now? Logic would prevail that most of us would relax, watch the Olympics, and give the subject a break for at least the roster freeze... but I come back and the same speculation exists, the same trade proposals surface.
No new rumors. No new facts. Opinion. Speculation. Ungratefulness.
Ungrateful that we finally have a team that could take us far. Ungrateful for the players that have gotten us here.
And in the midst of it all, a very successful 2 month run that has offered quite a lot of hope for this season, has been lost on a bunch of you. I've seen a lot of posters say "I want the team to succeed but...."... funny thing is, those posters tend to be the most negative and tend to turn as quickly as the tide turns. Keep talking about what the Rangers should do, about how unhappy you'll be in the event that they don't appease your desires, and in the meantime... miss out on the team that's actually creating a lot of noise and buzz on the ice.
Keep at it guys!
