WELL, of course the Rangers collapsed because of the Olympics. Because we know that no other team in NHL history has ever played its best hockey in February.
It was just so unfair to the Blueshirts. Woe was they.
Of course, it’s so obvious that by having such a large number of their best players not only participating in Turin, but going to the Games’ two medal matches, the Rangers had no chance to actually compete hard in more than one or two of their last nine games, let alone sprinkle in a win or two over their final three weeks.
Of course, at the same time, it’s completely unfair to suggest that having such a large number of their best players participating in elite European competition during the lockout gave the Rangers a distinct advantage over just about everyone else through the pre-Olympic portion of the schedule.
Listen, seasons are always skewed one way or another. Did the Rangers bear an undue burden of the Olympic experience? Maybe. But without the break, it’s unlikely the team would have played with anything approaching the urgency it did in going 10-1-1 with six straight wins prior to the hiatus.
Without that kick, maybe the team would not have had a cushion with which to make the playoffs. Maybe they would have peaked way too soon anyway. Who knows?
Truth is, the Olympics were nothing more than a factor in the team’s grisly demise. Truth is, the team that restored credibility and respectability to the program simply wasn’t constructed to succeed in the playoffs; not deep enough, not tenacious enough, not committed enough. Yes, they had injuries, too.
It doesn’t really matter what Ranger management says. If Tom Renney wanted to cite the Olympics more than a dozen times in a 20-minute post-mortem with the press 48 hours after elimination, that’s fine.
That’s fine, that is, as long as he doesn’t really believe it, and as long as he, Glen Sather and Don Maloney don’t make their off-season decisions while looking through delusional lenses.
Every player in the organization, and every player in whom the Rangers might have interest, must now be evaluated on their projected ability to compete and be a winning player in the playoffs. The Rangers must integrate more physical toughness and more straight-line players into the system.
And the Rangers must not only begin up front by constructing a checking line (from within or without), but, painful as this might be to Renney and to Jaromir Jagr, the team must match that unit against the opposition’s top guns throughout the regular season in order to be prepared for the playoffs.
Let’s face it. Jagr’s line going power against power is great to watch during the regular season, but as long as Lou Lamoriello runs the Devils, the team the Rangers are always going to have go through, the Blueshirts will never get that match in the playoffs.
To be a playoff team, management, the head coach and the players must think like a playoff team and act like a playoff team from the first day of training camp.
This is the step the Rangers must take. It won’t be easy. Even factoring in the Olympics and the key late injuries, the way the Rangers lost their last nine radically reduces the honeymoon period for the team and the head coach. The spotlight is going to be trained much more quizzically on everyone, after the final debacle.
If last year’s decision-making cycle focused on building a credible product around Jagr, this year’s must be devoted to building a team that can succeed when the stakes are raised, one that can compete both psychologically and in the tough patches of ice that still exist in the playoffs, even as speed and mobility have their impact.
Jagr said it himself at the rink on Monday, more than once, and in more than one way. The 2006-07 Rangers can’t be about making Jagr comfortable by surrounding him with friends; the objective has to be about making Jagr better by surrounding him with players who will free him of some of the enormous burden he shouldered all season.
That’s what Jagr meant when he said, “I’m not celebrating anything; my success is club success.”
That’s what Jagr meant when he said, “I want to win the Cup . . . I want to win the Cup in New York.”
That’s what Jagr meant when he said, “I would be happy to see everybody back, for sure, but business is business.”
It isn’t enough to identify a prospective Ranger according to his talent or nationality, though Czech native Martin Havlat might just be worth careful consideration this summer. It’s more than that. It’s about who can compete, one shift after another, against the Devils in the playoffs?
That’s the bottom-line question the Ranger decision- makers should have at the top of their play er- evaluation forms as they consider the ongoing reconstruction of the franchise.
When doing so, they are advised against looking through rear- view mirrors warped by an illusion of Turin.
