This year has had their coach fired. Tampa, Ottawa, Pittsburgh and Now Rangers!

Rangers and Pens fire their coaches… last offseason, both teams got simultaneously less talented and softer, while losing a lot of the veteran leadership that had sustained their teams previously.

Renney probably did the most with the least. Not many teams can lose two Hall of Famers in one year and still be in a playoff position by the end of February.

The unforgivable sin, apparently.

First Therrien, now Renney.

Renney sealed his fate months ago, when he passed up opportunities to make statements to his team by cutting the ice time of (or benching) his underacheiving players. Instead, he continued to reward the same underachieving players with more and more quality ice time, and penalizing the players who actually played with heart, guts, and extra effort. He was a good soldier for the Rangers coming out of the lockout, but on this current team of non-self-starters, his positive attitude and “give them time to work it out” attitude was not the right fit.

Similarly, its good that Perry Pearn was axed too. He was nominally in “charge” of the Rangers PP…which has flat out sucked for over 2 seasons.

What’s sad, however, is that the real culprit – Sather, skates away again. How many coaches is this? How many people in the league are laughing at the contracts he gave to Redden and Rosival? If Sather had any balls, he would go back behind the bench himself, and give the paying fans a chance to serenade him in person.

Until Sather goes, this team will never been anything more than a middle-of-the-road team.

And that’s the bottom line.

The Rangers are reporting via Twitter that John Tortorella will replace Renney.

Ah,damn. I looked at it quick and thought it said “official” not “unofficial”

Thanks for clearing it up.

Renney deserves criticism for a lot of things. The line juggling is my personal pet peeve, and when a team gives up this many SHG and has that many TMM penalties called against them (TWO in the same game last night!), I view that as a sign of disarray on the bench. But Larry Brooks said it well in a recent column – Renney deserves a lot of credit for bringing this team out of the dark years, and their conversion from laughingstock of the league to a legitimate contender.

In sum, a good person who represented the franchise well, who was good for young players, and successfully managed some quirky personalities for a while, but who was ultimately undone by his conservative coaching and inability to hold star players accountable for lackluster play.

That said, I’m not sure that the love child of Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman could make this team a winner. I hear that Boomer is ripping Sather on XM right now, and good for him. Sather is the reason why this team is screwed for the foreseeable future. All of you guys may want to bust out your old $tranger jokes, you’ll get some good use out of them when the Rangers miss the playoffs for the next four years.

The only shock here is how Glen Sather has become so good at politics that he somehow has fooled Dolan into believing he knows what he is doing when he has actually wasted at least 100 million dollars in bad contracts since he was hired in 2000.

The only good thing to come out of this is a real big shakeup and possibly a new system that focuses more on the Rangers offensive power than their above-average defense. Staal, Girardi, Mara, and Reitz (in that order) are the only defense the Rangers have who are of any worth to me. The system is what allowed the Rangers to play such good defense, and that special someone between the pipes.

The Rangers can play great hockey if they open things up and get the young guys wheeling the puck around. Take chances, because right now even if they play .500 hockey they can still make the playoffs. Let’s hope (as a Ranger fan) they get on a roll…

Also, Sather is the true problem, as many have already pointed out. And I highly recommend the Glen Sather. Hockey Genius. site for a good laugh.

Torts in Manhattan. Man, this is going to be delicious, even if they don’t add Avery.

If Tortorella is indeed the new man in MSG, we’re going to see some drama unless certain players step up. As he isn’t afraid to single out players he’s not going to put up with how guys like Redden, Roszival and Gomez play with those contracts. That said, it could be suicidal for his career to take over a team that’s structured so badly when he has Tampa’s last season weighing upon himself as well. I’m not sure if I expect improvement from the Rangers as they can’t get out from those player contracts, but at least the complacency will be over.

One thing that could turn the Rangers’ season around is the firing of Pearn. If they get someone good to run the PP and Tortorella won’t tolerate going back to their bad habits, that could lead to more wins. Also, possibly having more accountability when it comes to stupid defensive errors (such as junior-level coverage problems during otherwise strong defensive games) helps.

Renney did a great job turning the franchise around. This year, however, the same weaknesses have been costing them every night despite strong play in other areas. For some reason he didn’t do a good job correcting the problem areas, and even when he tried (too late into the season) the team seemed out of synch. Unlike many fired coaches, I don’t think he lost the room at any point, but along with the overpaid underachievers, being unable to do anything to fix problems is what cost him his job.

Now if we can just find Milbury a new job TSN’s hockey shows will approach watchable again. I doubt any hockey team actually wants him, I wonder if Tyler Chicken is hiring…

Torterella worked as an assistant coach a lot earlier than that: here’s an interview from when he was an assistant in Buffalo in 1991-92. Unless you just meant “first worked” in the sense of, “first worked in New York.”

The only thing I can say is that Henrik Lundqvist had better watch out, because he is screwed. Torts won’t play defensive hockey and Hank was already under siege with Redden and company unable to help out. This can’t end well …