1926-2004

Bring a handkerchief, readers, because this isn’t a normal Between Period column. This is a eulogy. The New York Rangers are dead.

The Rangers? Dead? Again? You don’t say.

Nice article, Captain Obvious. You’re only getting this now? Have you spent the better part of the last decade trapped in a spider hole with Christian Dube and Par Djoos? Seven straight years of misery, frustration, heartbreak and humiliation—and you’re only now coming to this conclusion? You’re a fan of the Rangers, right? Expensive team, lots of old guys, Statue of Liberty on the jersey? They’ve been dead for years. What team have you been watching?

Yeah, I know, dead and dying. But not this kind of dead. Not dead dead. Not “fundamentally” dead, as Bobby Holik might say. Not “meet me at the old mill and bring a bag of quickline and a shovel” dead. Not don’t-even-pick-the-bones-from-the-carcass-because-you-might-catch-whatever-killed-it dead. This time they’re really dead. Really really dead. Call a priest, have the doctor note the time, and get the body in the ground before it starts to smell—dead. D-E-A-D.

Overreacting to a bad week? Hardly. This isn’t about Eric Lindros’s recent concussion, the acquisition of Jaromir Jagr, or the pile of injuries that’s mounting faster than a frat kid on Paris Hilton. This isn’t about the glaring cry-for-help losses, the fundamental errors, the mind-numbing mistakes, or the way that the Hall of Fame coach shouts “Bingo!” when everyone around him is playing chess. This isn’t about mediocre talent being put in critical situations or star talent failing to provide anything but mediocrity. This isn’t about the chemistry, or the salaries, or the system, or the lack of youth. This isn’t about seven years without the playoffs right before a lockout that will forever change the landscape of the NHL. This isn’t even about the fact that Glen Sather is one more Alex Kovalev blunder away from completely snapping and trading Jed Ortmeyer for the rights to Dave Lumley.

All these are just symptoms, really, of a much more bloated and pungent problem. As any Rangers fan will tell you, this hockey team had been dying since the late 90s, well before their final playoff game in 1997. That series, where the underdog Rangers fought valiantly as a speed-bump for Eric Lindros and his powerhouse Flyers squad, should have been the last brave gasp of dignity from a terminal but proud man. Neil Smith sort of knew it—he even put a mirror under its breath when he let Mark Messier run off to steal money from the Vancouver Canucks—but instead of pulling the plug, he swallowed the DNR request and put the Rangers on a respirator. But they look so healthy, he thought. Medicine is improving every day. We’ll eventually find a cure.

Years went by, coaches were fired, players shuffled, new managers brought in—and yet this sick patient never improved. Finally—and who can really say when—the Rangers passed quietly in the night, with little struggle. The body should have been laid to rest. Instead the powers that be, either too proud to admit defeat or too scared to live up to the consequences, decided to prop the festering carcass up and pass it off as a hockey team, like a Broadway revival of “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

And I fell for it. You fell for it too. We had our suspicions, sure, but somehow the jerky movements of the people pulling the strings were just convincing enough to dupe our hearts into believing what our heads always knew. The Rangers were dead. We were watching a corpse. And living in denial.

Protest all you want, complain about how you wanted rebuilding as far back as 1995--you fell for this illusion too. Every offseason they decorated this blueshirted stiff with another gallon of embalming fluid and another layer of face paint. For seven years they spruced the corpse and lugged it to training camp. Maybe you thought they looked pale, tired and languid—the lack of youth, the nagging injuries, the history itself—but you still wanted to believe the lie. This team was flawed, but flawed only in the way that all teams are flawed. It was simply inconceivable that they would fail to make their incredibly non-lofty goal of a playoff berth in April. We naturally had our doubts, but that’s what makes us Rangers fans.

This season was no different. A mediocre preseason became a dreadful opening night loss to the Gaborik-less Minnesota Wild. The win-one, lose-one struggles through the first half of the season, with premier players mired in prolonged slumps, seemed like a cold that never went away. The goalies could no longer carry the team; the cold became a violent, hacking cough. Back to back losses to Boston had the Rangers coughing up blood. Management clamored for more expensive greasepaint. A 9-1 loss to Ottawa was like watching Lou Gehrig fall off his stool in “The Pride of the Yankees.” And with a 2-1 loss to Washington, perhaps the last game of Eric Lindros’s career, the sick and rotting head of this Frankenstein monster, this gruesome marionette, worn and frayed at its stitching, finally tore from the body and came crashing to the ice at MSG. The public was horrified, frightened and enraged.

And now the Rangers stand lifeless before you, their star player gone, their enthusiasm waning. This team has quit on their coach and GM, quit on each other, quit on themselves. This will be their seventh year without the playoffs. The prospects (what few they have) aren't ready to contribute; the veterans have little use to anyone else. And we fans are heartbroken, once again, staring at a headless corpse, wondering what should be done.

This isn’t just another one of those articles that suggests the Rangers start dumping veterans and devote themselves to an honest-to-God youth movement—Lord knows you’re going to get plenty of those in the next few months. Nor is this another self-righteous “I told you so” rant that are all too commonly directed at New York, notably from out-of-town sources whose hometown does the very same things but somehow gets away with it; winning covers any mistake. The debate between whether or not New York fans have the patience for a true youth movement has no answer, and is probably irrelevant anyway. The New York Rangers need to make the playoffs every single year, and the lucrative payoffs from doing so (and being as successful as possible) make it impossible for the managers and ownership not to do everything in their power to improve the chances of this happening. Argue about their flawed strategy at accomplishing this, but ask yourself how long the NHL—a corpse in its own right—would last if its only productive market were reduced to the level of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the next three years, with still no certainty that this would change anything other than the names on the jerseys. Ask if you’d subject yourself to The Garden’s high prices, knowing the product is substandard and that the ownership responsible is profiting at a larger rate than before. I myself take great pride in our ridiculous payroll. At least it takes money out of Jim Dolan’s chubby hands.

And for the record, I’m not even suggesting that practical steps toward rebuilding be taken either—I’m advocating many impractical changes as well. I don’t think they should just dump whatever aging players they have out into the NHL netherworld for prospects and picks, I think that once they’ve done this they should start shooting pucks into their own net. I think the league should rig the 2004 entry draft lottery to ensure that they nab Alexander Ovechkin. I don’t think that the management and coaches should just be fired, I think they should resurrect some colonial restriction from assembly law to prevent these guys from even having lunch together. I want to see MSG completely torn to the ground and excavated by the anthropology department at Columbia to see if it was once a burial ground for people with ACL tears. I want this organization purged of every decaying tissue that has haunted and tormented the franchise since its early existence. Tear the posters off the walls, change the jerseys, melt the equipment, and fire the Zamboni drivers. Purge the organization of everything that ails it. Perform an exorcism.

But knowing this will never happened, and that it’s silly to write another hopeless request to management to rebuild and remodel, what exactly is this all about? This is one fan’s honest plea for stability. For rationality. For consistency. For accountability. For sympathy. Because I, as a fan, can’t take it any more.

I can’t take it anymore.

I can’t keep watching star players turn into basket-cases because they can’t perform to their past level. I can’t keep watching my favorite players break down into decrepit shells. I can’t keep hearing the same tired cliché quotes about discipline and accountability and how “injuries killed us down the stretch.” I can’t get excited about the grit of character guys like Todd Harvey, Mike Knuble, Ronald Petrovicky, Manny Malhotra and Matt Barnaby, knowing full well that they’re viewed as expendable. I can’t watch the Kim Johnsson’s and Tomas Kloucek’s and Mike York’s get traded away. I can’t see another star succumb to whatever personal problem or injury baggage they bring with them to MSG.

Theo Fleury, Pavel Bure, Eric Lindros—all ended disappointingly. And now Jaromir Jagr. How am I supposed to get excited about this, knowing he’s just another diseased limb sown on to a decaying body? How can I be enthusiastic as a fan anymore, knowing that some horrible fate awaits him: gambling addiction? shoulder injury? marries Scores dancer? shot by P Diddy? fired by Donald Trump? run over by Lizzie Grubman? After all the history of heartbreak that this team constantly gives to me, how can I be expected to believe them when they swear this is the time that they're finally going to change?

I can’t take it anymore.

I (sadly) live and die with this team. Every crushing blow that I sit through picks away at my red, white, and blue heart. Eric Lindros won me over. I was his fan. And now, even if he does come back, I can't watch him play without cringing from every hit, knowing that he’s one small shot away from vegetable city, just another ticking time-bomb at MSG. This dead team is going nowhere. It died a long time ago. You reach a point where it’s impossible to even care.

Lay the body to rest and try again. Close the lid on the coffin, say a quick prayer, cue the piper to play “Amazing Grace,” fire 88 rifle shots, shed a quick tear, and pile the earth over top.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, something to something...

Amen.

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