Before Jim Schoenfeld was named assistant coach for the remainder of the season, the Rangers attempted to get Mike Sullivan from the Tampa Bay Lightning, Andrew Gross reports.
A little bit on the Rangers’ pursuit of Lightning associate coach Mike Sullivan, who Tortorella initially targeted to be his top assistant. When a deal couldn’t be struck with Tampa Bay, Tortorella turned to Jim Schoenfeld, who was the Coyotes coach when Tortorella was a Phoenix assistant.
Sullivan has a clause in his contract that allows him to pursue any NHL job if he can “better” his situation and the Lightning will not file tampering charges regarding Sullivan. Look for Tortorella and the Rangers to re-visit the Sullivan situation over the summer with a deal that will be better for Sullivan than what he has in Tampa Bay.
This should fill in the questions that people have about the interim title that Jim Schoenfled has. Torts has been very vocal that Schoenfeld is doing him a favor. I woudl expect Sullivan behind the bench with Torts next season.
Tortorella telling everyone to “stay the #$%^ off the logo” gives me chills. I’m a stickler for tradition, respect, and honor…you know, all those things the Rangers and Tom Renney pretended to practice the last couple seasons. Even though they preached it ad nauseum in that ridiculous pre-game entrance video last season, I never felt that Renney really got the feeling of what it was like to play/coach in New York. He WILL motivate these boys and make them have a sense of pride when pulling the Rangers jersey over their heads. The fans “bleed blue”, and the players should be no different.
Maybe I’m looking a bit too much into it, but I think there’s something to be said about an American coming to coach hockey in New York. Naturally, a Canadien coach’s roots are embedded in Canada. With Tortorella, you have an American, born and bred in northeastern United States, who previously played and coached in New York. The best analogy I can use is a college coach going to coach somewhere OTHER than his alma mater: no matter how successful he is, the ties and loyalty to his alma mater will always be there, and that’s not something you can just shake loose.
His first rule is only the beginning. If he is as great as a motivator as we all hear he is, these players will never take a shift off. They will realize the importance of playing in New York, for an Original Six team, in the World’s Most Famous Arena, because he will make them understand it. The past few seasons, its been all talk. Hopefully now, they will start to feel it as the fans and their coach does (finally)
Those of us wondering why Pelino was sticking around on the bench got our answer today: he’s not. Pelino was reassigned to tape work and scouting, as Torts wanted a clean break from the old coaching staff (minus Allaire). This includes tearing down the standings and the stats that Renney had posted in the locker room.
Zipay has a lot of quotes from Torts, so you should check them out. The basic gist of it was that they will be shifting to an attacking defensive style, much like the one you saw in Tampa in 2004. They will be getting away from the trap system, and playing more of a transitional game, causing turnovers and capitalizing.
The only thing that irked me was that Torts said he is going to take over the penalty kill. I don’t know what that means, but I hope he doesn’t tamper with it. You don’t fix something that is 2nd best in the league.
One last thing, that I found to be quite telling of the type of coach Torts is, and who he reminds me of. Players and reporters are now forbidden to walk on the Rangers logo in the locker room. Torts said that the logo is not something you should walk on, anywhere.
Doesn’t that remind you a little of the Messier story when he found a Ranger jersey on the floor?
Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the Denis Potvin hit on Ulf Nilsson in 1979 that ended Nilsson’s season and sparked the now famous ‘Potvin Sucks’ chant. The NY Times ran an article about the history of the chant, and it is definitely worth a read. You can read it here.
A chant from hatred has now become Ranger tradition. I love it.
As per Jane McManus, Torts has switched up the lines for his first practice, and I like the combos:
Dubinsky-Drury-Callahan
Naslund-Gomez-Zherdev
Dawes-Korpo-Prucha
Sjostrom-Betts-Orr
No Voros. I likey.
He has a press conference right now, I don’t think it is being televised. I’m listening Mike Francesa to see if he is going to talk about it. I doubt it.
So what does Tortorella get today when he comes to practice? Tortorella gets a team that is in free fall, a team that is 2-7-3 in their last 12. He gets a team that is currently 6th in the East with 69 points, but just 2 points out of 9th, and 4 points out of 10th.
He gets a team that is 29th in the league in scoring, at 2.33 G/G (Nashville is last). He gets a powerplay that has been god awful at 13.8%, good for 28th in the league. In short, Tortorella gets a team that relies on holding their opponent to 1 goal a game.
Tortorella is the exact opposite of Tom Renney. He is an in your face guy, and most importantly, will hold the high priced guys accountable for terrible play. It looks like the high priced guys knew this was coming, because Gomez and Drury have been playing well lately, and Rozsival and Redden have been better. Yes, Redden has been better. He still cracks a little bit under a rush, but his first passes have been solid.
Torts is a “safe is death” guy. So expect a lot more scoring chances, at the expense of defense. I say chances because we never know if this team can actually finish. Hank will have a little bit more of a workload as a result, but that shouldn’t really worry or surprise anyone.
The powerplay should also look a lot better. Torts will get in Rozsival’s and Redden’s faces about shooting more. We may actually see Marc Staal on the powerplay, which will make all of us very happy.
Basically, expect to see the Rangers evolve into a different type of team. They will attempt to play an up tempo game. Torts was the best hire that Sather could have made.
A few side notes from the Torts hiring:
- Torts does not like Avery. Do not expect him back with the Rangers any time soon.
- Torts is not the savior of this team. It is still a very flawed team built by a flawed GM. Sather should be praised for this move, and the Zherdev move. But his signings have been ridiculous.
- Don’t underestimate the value of having Schoenfeld behind the bench as an assistant. He knows this current team better than anyone within the organization, and will help Torts get acquainted.
- Expect a transition period. The Rangers will be going from a defensive system to an offensive system, and there will be some collateral damage. Expect them to make some glaring mistakes while they adjust.
Who knows what Torts will do. Maybe he reads this blog and knows that we want Prucha in the lineup in lieu of Voros. I can only hope.
Posted by: Dave, on at 9:42 am in State of the Rangers | Comments (2)
Tags: Aaron Voros, Chris Drury, Henrik Lundqvist, Jim Schoenfeld, John Tortorella, Marc Staal, Michal Rozsival, Petr Prucha, Scott Gomez, Sean Avery, Wade Redden
It’s official, John Tortorella is the new Rangers head coach. According to Rick Carpiniello, Jim Schoenfeld was the first choice, but did not want the job. He will serve as interim assistant coach, replacing Perry Pearn. Mike Pelino remains as an assistant coach, and Benoit Allaire remains as the goalie coach.
Sather got this move right. When changing coaches, especially on a team that appears to have trouble getting motivated, you have to hire a coach that is the polar opposite of the coach you just let go. Tortorella is an in your face guy, and I’m looking forward to him interact with the media.
This has been a very busy day, with Renney and Pearn out, and Tortorella in. But, according to TheFourthPeriod, the Rangers are showing some interest in Derek Morris. I love rumormongoring, but this one insults my intelligence. The last thing the Rangers need is another high priced, 30 year old defensemen who doesn’t play well in his own end (-11).
Granted, if they take on Morris and dump one of Redden or Rozsival (who have been playing much better so far, but not up to those absurd contracts), I’m all for it.
According to Jane McManus, the Rangers have fired head coach Tom Renney and assistant coach Perry Pearn. No word on their replacements yet, but the John Tortorella rumblings can’t be far away.
The move comes on the heels of a stretch in which the Blueshirts went 2-7-3, picking up just seven of a possible twenty-four points. The team was outscored 43-21 during that stretch, and have dropped to sixth place in the Eastern Conference, just two points out of ninth.
Well, we certainly can’t say it was a surprise move, this has been anticipated for weeks. The next head on the chopping block is likely GM Glen Sather’s, who’s built a team with little roster flexibility and serious cap issues down the road. With the trade deadline just over a week away, we’ll see how Sather reacts to the heat.
Update 1:00pm (Dave): New coach will be John Tortorella. Sather got this one right. Let’s hope Tortorella lights a fire under this team’s ass.
Update 3:50pm (Dave): As per Steve Zipay, the Tortorella deal is all but done. The league is helping broker a deal with the Lightning, who want compensation because he still has time left on his deal with Tampa.
Whenever I go to write a post, I have this habit of checking the blog stats, just to see how many people are visiting the blog, and how many people are redirected here from Google searches.
Now these Google searches are standard usually, mostly ‘ny rangers blog’ or ‘new york rangers blog’, you know, common stuff you would expect. Why am I telling you this?
We here at BSB now have the #1 Google search result for ‘what the hell happened to the ny rangers‘.
I love it.
Update 9:19am: I wrote this post last night, and published it this morning to give a little space between posts. And in that time, we have dropped to #5. Such is life.
But this brings up a valid point, what the hell happened to the NY Rangers?
