I started covering the New York Rangers in 1999. During that stretch I've seen everything from a player getting busted for smoking crack in a hotel room with a hooker, to an oafish defenseman winning a game in a shootout by snapping a puck through his legs. I've watched Theo Fleury, Eric Lindros, Pavel Bure, Brian Leetch, Mark Messier, Jaromir Jagr, and Dave Karpa. I witnessed a twelve-month span where the coaches were Ron Low and Bryan Trottier, who were so equally atrocious that Old Man Sather had to step down from his MSG perch, slip on some twenty-year-old suits and coach the team himself. I've stood steady through substance abuse problems and a full-season lockout and the entire Peter Nedved Era.

Honestly, I'm a little bored.

Not bored with hockey, mind you, and certainly not bored with spreading the gospel on these pages. The start of the Rangers season is a personal renewal for me -- where most people retreat from winter, I welcome it. A special part of my life is missing during the offseason. I simply cannot wait for that first cold Saturday afternoon, snow on the ground outside, where I roll out of bed, fix myself a steaming bowl of chili and watch the Garden matinee. But even with those good moments only weeks away, that doesn't excuse the fact that, now entering year seven, I'm still a little bored.

Take training camp, for example. Every single training camp is exactly the same. Who looks good? Who got fat? How's his groin? It's like listening a group of single women who get together once a month for brunch. It's indicative of nothing, nothing counts (except maybe an injury), the play is sub-pro, and it only matters for the one or two kids killing themselves for a chance to play five minutes a night on the fourth line. Yawn-o-rama.

But maybe that's just me, sounding like a husband whose listened to his wife snore in his ear for the last seven years and is now contemplating putting a pillow over her mouth. Either way, the season can't start soon enough. Let's get to the links.

Sigh. Here we go. Uncle Larry Brooks at The Post stumping for a Brian Leetch return to Broadway. Look, no one loves Brian Leetch more than me. I wouldn't be writing this column right now if Brian Leetch played his career anywhere but New York. But I'm over the idea that it's not dignified to give a great athlete, a once-in-a-lifetime athlete, his final props at the place that started it all. I'd rather have Brian Leetch go out with a whimper instead of a bang than watch him struggle nightly on a .500 team with a bunch of Czech and Swedish dudes. I'm still not over the scars that Mark Messier's second trip back to Broadway left. Brian Leetch II has the potential to be as horrifying as watching former A-list babe Phoebe Cates doing midget porn or something.

(By the way, I think the Rangers have an under-the-table deal worked out to bring Brian Leetch onboard at the midpoint. Think about it. What's killed Leetch lately is the injuries from the grind, so if you shelf him for half the season, you get a fresh all-pro player during the playoff push without having to deal away talent in a trade. If the Rangers are in contention in January and word leaks out that Leetch has been practicing with the team, who wouldn't be excited by this? Stay tuned.)

Uncle Larry says some other stuff about the salary cap and the Devils and Bill Daly and blah blah blah.

The Daily News has a quick blurb about last night's game in, um, Puerto Rico. Remember in Rocky IV when Ivan Drago killed Apollo Creed and a vengeful and broken Sylvester Stallone drove his Porsche like ninety miles an hour to the sounds of "No Easy Way Out" before announcing that he was going to Siberia to train, where he grew a monsterous beard and did ab-work while hanging from a horse stable and jogged through two feet of snow while the KGB followed him? Remember that? Well the Rangers went to Puerto Rico for training camp. Keep this in mind at the start of the season. But I'm sure their tans will look great, though.

Want more Puerto Rico action? The Zipper at Newsday with this extensive write-up on the Rangers mission of goodwill in the Carribean, including an almost shout-out from a Hockeybird board regular. Keep spreading the word! Steve Zipay is by far the best hockey scribe we have going right now, but this column is just a little silly. It makes the Rangers seem more like missionaries than unknown athletes killing time between practice. Imagine that you're sick in the hospital and suddenly someone says to you "Some members from Ghana's soccer team are here to wish you luck." What would your reaction be? Plus I have this image of a little sick Spanish kid, let's call him Pedro, wasting away in a hospital pediatrics ward when a doctor tells him that hockey players from America are here to see him. "Que?" Pedro asks, "Did they bring my medicine?" And they didn't even send the A-listers either, just a bunch of rookies. And there's something very uncomfortable about strange young men checking out sick kids in foreign lands. If the Rangers ever hold a training camp in Thailand, I might have to reconsider my fandom.

There's some photos too in the Newsday column. Just click the window next to the column that says, "Teen Mom Arraigned After Baby Dies in Vomit."

Colin Stephenson at the Bergin Record with a decent piece about Petr Prucha's training camp. I'm a little hard on Pookie because I think he gets some undue attention based on his young-player status and his enthusiasm on the ice, but the Rangers absolutely need him to produce this season if they want to be successful. Hearing that he's having a strong camp is great news -- another two goals last night, by the way. Now if we could just separate the umbilical cord between him and Jagr, we'd be set.

There's some other hockey stuff out there too. Ken Hitchcock resigns with Flyers, payment in donuts; Mike Dunham opens some eyes in Isles training camp, but not in a good way; and Steve Konowalchuk produces what might be the strangest headline I've ever read. Otherwise it's training camp as usual -- guys you've never heard of are scoring goals, fantasy sleepers are lining up, and Peter Forsberg is hurt. Good times.

As always, I'll wrap things up with my Skank of the Week link. So last night I'm watching Season 3 of Scrubs on DVD -- what has two thumbs and doesn't give a rat's ass? -- and I keep thinking to myself, "Where's Tara Reid these days?" Well, some questions are best left unanswered. Like the Kennedy assassination, Kurt Cobain's suicide and 9-11, I think we'll all remember exactly where we were when we found out that Tara Reid had her breasts removed. I was sitting in the Law Review office, nursing a hangover and ducking my responsibilities. So it's time to go. You stay classy, Rangers' fans!

Recent Articles Versus Playoff Coverage Road Trip Pics

Web Hockeybird.com