THN.com Blog: Sather the architect of Broadway's blues

After a hot start, there hasn't been much to cheer about for the Rangers. (Photo by Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)

Adam Proteau
2009-12-14 13:45:00

Before Michael Jackson’s death, master comedian Lewis Black told a great joke about the singer; essentially, Black said, Jackson had become such a joke, for all the wrong reasons, that you could simply state his name as the punch line to any setup – e.g., why did the chicken cross the road? Michael Jackson – and you’d still make people laugh.

I don’t know if Black is still telling the joke (knowing what I think I know about him, I’m sure he is), but if he needs a replacement subject for it, I have the perfect candidate:

The New York Rangers, a.k.a. the NHL’s answer to what happens when an unstoppable force (Henrik Lundqvist) meets an immovable object (the contracts of Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival).

To be fair, neither Redden nor Rozsival is the chief culprit behind the Blueshirts’ current skid (1-5-1 in their past seven games; 7-14-2 since mid-October). John Tortorella isn’t to blame, either.

Nope, this mess is on the man at the top – president/GM Glen Sather – and the owner (James Dolan) who continues to support him.

Let me dust off and update the rap sheet on Sather: Since he took over as GM in June of 2000, the Rangers have won 14 playoff games – and no more than six in a single post-season.

But here’s the biggest indictment of his tenure: As a result of summer after summer of spending by Sather, the team’s prospects for future improvement have been severely hampered.

Redden’s $6.5 million salary and Rozsival’s $5 million annual stipend are painful enough, but Rangers fans are well aware their favorite franchise has roughly $10 million in cap space (and 16 players signed) entering next season and roughly $19 million in cap space (and eight players signed) for the 2011-12 campaign.

Sather won’t be able to foist one of his numerous overpayments on another GM in the next off-season the way he did with Bob Gainey last summer. He has damaged the Rangers short-term and long-term, nearly to the same degree Isiah Thomas did with the NBA’s Knicks.

How is it, then, Dolan fired Thomas nearly two years ago? Obviously, past successes as a basketball player carry less cache around Dolan’s office than past successes as an NHL GM and coach.

Related Links

Say what you will about former Blueshirts GM Neil Smith, but the fact remains, the latter has won a championship in New York and the former has not. That Smith hasn’t found extended employment since then, while Sather keeps swinging and missing like a blindfolded kid at a piñata party in a wind tunnel, speaks to the inherent cruelties of life.

And that’s perhaps the biggest insult here: Rangers fans have had to endure the Sather era for more than a decade. Even in Toronto, where not winning NHL championships has become the team’s predominant tradition, Sather’s output in Manhattan would have had him on the breadlines in five years, tops.

It might be different were he proficient at drafting and developing young NHLers, but players such as Michael Del Zotto have been the exception and Hugh Jessiman-types the rule.

To summarize: Sather no longer can draft, spends free-agent dollars as if he were paid an agent’s commission and hasn’t seen the third round of the playoffs in 10 years. He has become a hidden husk of a fading legend, with a stick of dynamite where a cigar used to be.

With every passing day, the shine on his story dims. However, the more important defacing has happened to the Rangers, who have become the most directionless of the Original Six franchises – and the go-to punch line for forgetful jokesters.

Blueshirts diehards deserve far better than that. But nothing short of the current GM’s removal will reverse their malaise and stop them from believing Dolan wants 10 more years under Sather before giving up on this ghastly vision.

Adam Proteau, co-author of the book The Top 60 Since 1967, is writer and columnist for The Hockey News and a regular contributor to THN.com. His blog will appear regularly in the off-season, his Ask Adam feature appears Fridays and his column, Screen Shots, appears Thursdays.

For more great profiles, news and views from the world of hockey, Subscribe to The Hockey News magazine.

COMMENTS (31)

Sort: Oldest | Newest Filter: All | Videos

indy500 Posted
(2009-12-24 11:43:11)

Sather was a hacker as a player and under-achieved as a coach. Not surprised he is a questionable GM. Hall of Famer - what a joke. He's a total douchbag. Keep drinking his koolaid there Jimmy D.

anarion Posted
(2009-12-22 02:44:25)

Goats, as someone who just read read through your little scrum here with schlong, you appear to me to be missing his overall point, and while he obviously fudged (or more likely, guessed) some of his numbers, his point does stand out regardless. While I don't necessarily disagree that the Rangers with a "better" GM is a more desirable alternative, I also don't see too many people standing around waiting (and qualified) to fill the role of the GM of an Original Six team. They're obviously beginning the process of grooming Messier to replace him (look at his recent hiring as a special asst. to Slats), so Dolan (or someone unknown to us) obviously has his eye on the future, and the organization did indeed receive a 3rd overall ranking from what I'd call the most trusted site for prospect rankings and such. Something else I need to point out, and that's essentially that Sather was able to (impressively) turn "nothing" into an asset and trade it. Money obviously isn't the issue here, as the entire sum of the salary cap dollars for whole league is like a drop in the bucket to these people. So he signs Scott Gomez to an absurd contract, obviously well above his worth. Gives up nothing in return but salary. No trading of young assets. He then flips Gomez for the Habs top prospect in McDonagh, Higgins, and a few more guys I can't recall. So he now has aquired all those parts by essentially waiting out two years of Scott Gomez's contract. I don't know, I find it impressive, maybe I'm wrong. I could go on, but I'm tired and my hands hurt now, so that's all I've got.

goats14 Posted
(2009-12-18 13:00:38)

Schlongjohnson: "look at neil smith's drafting record from 1995-99 and point out how many players made it to the nhl and lasted more than 100 games WITH THE RANGERS...if you guessed 0, congratulations!)".....Even with your correction you're wrong. York (230G as a Ranger), Malhotra (206G as a Ranger), Lundmark (114G as a Ranger), Purinton (181G as a Ranger). And Savard and Kloucek were pretty close with 98 & 95 games as a Ranger respectively. Want to try one more time to spin this so you can be right? IMO they've been equal in their drafting. There were no prospects when Sather took over because Smith sacrificed them for the '94 Cup. That was then, this is now and right now Sather's cap management has put them in a big hole.....stpilots98: "Look at how awesome our defense is going to be in the next 2-3 years right when Drury and Rosies contracts are off the books. McDonagh, Staal, Girardi, Del Zotto, Gilroy and FA".....Drury and Rozcival will still be on the books when they need to resign Staal and Girardi. Granted they will be restricted free agents but their contracts are up after this season. Also the present roster (12/18/09) minus the impending free agents eats up 48.3M of cap space. Next year's cap has the possibility of going down, someone is going to have to be moved, if possible.

stpilots98 Posted
(2009-12-18 11:08:06)

Schlong Johnson is absolutely correct. Look at how awesome our defense is going to be in the next 2-3 years right when Drury and Rosies contracts are off the books. McDonagh, Staal, Girardi, Del Zotto, Gilroy and FA. Top 5 in league no doubt, crazy the prospects we have back there, and I am not even counting Sagnuietti because I think he'll be the odd man out. Sather has built our system nicely from where it was, check out hockeysfuture.com and check out or system rankings. 3rd behind only St. Louis and Nashville. Sather is not the problem people.

schlongjohnson Posted
(2009-12-17 19:24:12)

goats: ok, 8, not 0, but don't tell me that's a serious defense of smith's drafting record...i should, however, have phrased it thusly: given the fact that there were ZERO prospects when he took over (and i mean ZERO, look at neil smith's drafting record from 1995-99 and point out how many players made it to the nhl and lasted more than 100 games WITH THE RANGERS...if you guessed 0, congratulations!)....the fact remains that nobody drafted by neil smith worth saving (aside from maybe malhotra) was on the roster when sather took the reigns, which was my point: neil smith's horrific drafting put this franchise in a hole they're only just now climbing out of

goats14 Posted
(2009-12-17 08:26:46)

schlongjohnson: look at neil smith's drafting record from 1995-99 and point out how many players made it to the nhl and lasted more than 100 games...if you guessed 0, congratulations! Gotta love guys who post without doing their homework. 1995...Marc Savard 758G and counting. Bruins. 1995...Dale Purinton 181G 1997...Mike Mottau 208G and counting. Devils. 1997...Mike York 579G currently in the AHL 1998...Manny Malhotra 668G and counting. Sharks. 1998...Jason LaBarbera 112G and counting. Coyotes. 1998...Tomas Kloucek 141G currently in the KHL. 1999...Jamie Lundmark 265G and counting. Flames.

schlongjohnson Posted
(2009-12-16 19:46:03)

'blow up the team and build for the future' ok....how? drury, redden and roszival are all but untradeable (although if sather can find a sucker for gomez, a roszival or redden deal isn't impossible)....tell me this, do you have faith in james dolan to find a good...no, check that, a GREAT replacement? does james dolan know enough about hockey to go out and find a great candidate to be the next gm of this team? do you think sather really is the problem here?

kinghenrik Posted
(2009-12-16 12:54:41)

SchlongJohnson: give Sather another 6-8 years? Sure thing, in fact, why don't we give him another 12-15 years?..... Sather has run the franchise into the ground.......Dubinsky, Anisimov and Callahan are 2nd liners, at best.......Staal and Del Zotto are 1st pair material, Girardi and Sanguinetti are not......a few deals/signings/draft choices that come to mind: Antropov for a 2nd round pick, Derek Morris for Prucha and Dawes (but he did unload Kalinin in the process), Tyutin and Backman for Zherdev, the signings of Holik, Drury, Gomez, Redden, Roszival, the drafting of Montoya and Jessiman.......he stumbled into the drafting of Henrik Lundqvist and the trade for Jagr, pure luck on those 2.......IMHO, it is time to blow up the team and really build for the future......send the bad contracts to Hartford, find out what we really have in Hartford and hope for a lottery pick at the end of the season.........even if we stumble into the playoff, we will get blasted by the Caps or Penguins anyway.....

singollo Posted
(2009-12-16 10:12:05)

I have to say, I was completely on the Sather-bashing train, until I read the post by @schlongjohnson. While his analysis may still give Sather a little too much leeway, it made me think about Slat's tenure in NYC in a new way. All we ever talk about is the huge contract mistakes - Gomez, Redden, Roszival...et al. But, if you look at it from the simple perspective of "what team has he built", things look better for Sather. Staal, Girardi, Del Zotto, Saguinetti, and Gilroy may form one of the top collections of young defense talent in the league. He has a legit superstar up front (as long as as the dice on Gaborik's health stay lucky), and the supporting forward corps contains Dubinsky, Drury, Ansimov, and would include Cherepanov (if not for his tragic death). Obviously they have Lundqvist too, which gives them a bona fide number one netminder. So really, what are the components of a successful team? 1) Legit superstar foward. Check. 2) Strong, puck-moving defense corps. Check (or will be checked with another year development). 3) Top-tier goalie. Check. 4) True number-one centerman. Not a check. Really, the only item the Rangers lack is that legit star pivot that most champions seem to have. I'm not saying I fully buy this argument mind you, but it is an interesting way to look at things. Really, if you take the contracts given to Gomez and Redden out of the picture, Sather's NY tenure doesn't actually look half as bad as some GMs...(Don Waddell, anyone?)

svanberg1 Posted
(2009-12-16 06:38:55)

Sather do not understand WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN IN THE GAME OF HOCKEY TODAY, or what it have taken the last decade. In 2003, when everyone trapped in some way, he tryed to step behind the bench as a coach and play 80's hockey. That after EVERYONE else realised that you needed to trap in someway. Today his biggest fault is the complete and utter lack of understanding what it takes to play a offensive puck possesion style of hockey. And today you need to have the puck inorder to win. Look at the AMOUNT OF PLAYERS on the roster he have changed every summer. He have turned over almost 50% of the summer each of the last 4 summers. Thats just INSANE. No other team in this league is CLOSE. Compare NYR with NJD for example. 2-3 years ago NYR seemed to have a future and beat NJD in the PO's. While NJ seemed to be on the decline. NJD kept building in one direction. Sather in 2 summer changed 20+ players and of course its not working on the ice. As a real diehard rangerfan I've surffered a lot. We deserve better then Glen Sather.