Hockeybird.com: Rucinsky a Missed Opportunity?

Bless the guy, St. Louis general manager and ex- New York assistant general manager, Larry Pleau, has a fondness for veteran Ranger players.

He accepted Jeff Finley for exciting prospect Petr Smrek... well,he took Jeff Finley off our hands. Mike Eastwood made the trip from New York to St. Louis.

And in the latest chapter, Pleau has plucked Martin Rucinsky from the free agent pool by offering more cash and more years than Glen Sather was willing to ante.

So the question is - was losing Rucinsky a mistake? After all,he meshed
well with Lindros and Bure to end last season, whereas the pair,especially Lindros,has struggled to score this season.

The only argument that emanates from the "Bring Back Rucinsky" camp is that he'll spark Lindros and Bure to regain their chemistry from last season. Can there be a more ill-advised thought this side of Mike Milbury?

A team pays $8-10 million on a star player because their performance raises the level of their teammates. Star players take $1 million salary players and make them play like $4 million salary players.

Think Forsberg and Sakic. They are the cornerstones of the Avalanche, and they guarantee success for the club's young forwards. Think of how many forwards had career-making years in Colorado - Chris Simon, Adam Deadmarsh, Chris Drury, Milan Hedjuk, Alex Tanguay, and others. These players either become fixtures in the lineup, or develop significant trade value.

There is an ice cube's chance in an MSG urinal that anyone associated with the Avalanche would say "we need to sign Martin Rucinsky to play with Peter Forsberg to make certain he scores his points."

The Ranger scenario is even more absurd because it's assuming that TWO star players (with salaries to match) need a veteran like Rucinsky to make them productive.

I cringe at assumptions that fans make from end of season play. When
Rucinsky paired with Lindros and Bure,the Rangers were at the bottom of the standings fighting with five other teams for the eighth place seed.

Teams take bottom-dwellers lightly at the end of the 82 game season. But early in the season, especially for playoff-bound teams, opponents find a way to stop trends.

Easy analogy is the FLY line. After the line had startling success for a time,opponents focused on them and found that physical play eliminates their effectiveness.

Do you try him with Messier and Nedved on the second scoring line? Ugh,this line would cycle for a total of 30 seconds ... all season.

More to the point, after five years without a taste of the playoffs,isn't it time we filled the roster with players that have an upside? That perhaps another year of disappointment can be paired with the optimism that some of our players have room for improvement? That experience is something that lies more in front of them than behind?

Nedved is not working with Lindros and Bure,and there are plenty of
alternative wings that could legitimately get a shot. Matthew Barnaby
springs to mind, as do defensive-minded players with wheels,such as Petro,Ward,Samuelsson,and rookie Lundmark.

But there is no other suitable place for Nedved as long as Messier occupies one of the top three center spots.

If Bure and Lindros need Rucinsky to be effective,then let them pay the guy with their inflated salaries.

But, having said that,Sather still needs to clean up the mess he created by bringing back Messier. Either Mark needs to center the fourth line with Nedved getting the appropriate center position (our preference);or Nedved needs to be traded for a more appropriate forward balance.

I'll give Sather credit for not wanting to go for 2 years on Rucinsky, which was the deal breaker, but ya know what I'm thinking, Gabey? We DO pretty much need(ed) Rucinsky. Samuelsson, Ward, Murray, Barnaby, Sandy, Petro, even Holik... a nice buncha grinders but no reliable offense out of the entire lot. We lost the Caps game and tied the Preds game because we have a team full of minimally talented grinders below the 1st line. Rucinsky would've at least provided more offensive depth.

By the way, take back what you said about Mike Eastwood! He was a very good 4th line center, I thought. Eastwood could do a little bit of everything, especially compared to Tim Taylor, who could do nothing and had a big mouth about it.

Posted by: Rocha on October 25, 2002 01:00 PM

Excellent article. And I couldn't agree more.

Rucinsky was the classic 'player in a contract year' in the later portion of the season. A 31 year-old career underachiever who got a sniff of MSG's bank account and wanted to hit the 'mother load'.

The problem, of course, is that once he's signed, his incentive to play hard just evaporated.

Worst of all, I really think it's the vet laden mentality that takes the Rangers out of a lot of these games. Guys who've been in the league for a long time know when a game is going to be won or lost fairly early on. The mystery and mythology is basically gone for them. They're there to do their job, collect their check, and not get blamed for anything. They've got nothing left to prove.

Rem Murray, Dave Karpa, Slyvan Lefebrve, Dixon Ward, Sandy McCarthy, Krystof Oliwa, are all guys I'd put in this box. Not bad people, not totally unskilled hockey players. But guys who look up at the scoreboard in the third and see they're down by 2 goals with 10 mins to play and think, oh well, we'll get'em next time. Then they start to think about which bridge they should take on the drive home after the game.

And at least most of those guys give solid effort because they know they'll be in the AHL if they don't. Rucinsky was always talented enough to stick around the NHL.

Given a serious contract with the Rangers, Rucinsky would have been sucking wind faster than you can say, 'rangeritis'.

Posted by: Kubera55 on October 25, 2002 01:22 PM

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought Pleau was kind enough to take Gusarov off our hands in exchange for Smrek - only a couple months after the Rangers got him from the Avs for a mid round (5th maybe?) pick.

Posted by: Mike018 on October 25, 2002 01:43 PM

Gabe,

I don't know what you used to compose this article, but I took a full hour this morning to fix it.

That's a fact, not fiction.

I'm guessing that you used some microsoft thingee which added spaces and threw off all the lines. I edited it by hand to correct the problem.

Posted by: bird on October 25, 2002 04:25 PM