BLUE IT: The formula that worked for John Tortorella’s Rangers last season has not been as successful this time around, particularly when it comes to Marian Gaborik (10), writes The Post’s Larry Brooks. (
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Referring to the Rangers as the Black-and-Blueshirts seems quaint. Almost as quaint, come to think of it, as referring to the Rangers as Stanley Cup contenders.
They’re free-falling now and in the midst of a crisis as they prepare to face the Hurricanes at the Garden tonight before a match tomorrow night against the Devils in Newark. They’re falling and neither their best players — the ones who “disgusted” coach John Tortorella in Tuesday’s defeat in Buffalo that upset the apple cart — nor their coach appear capable of lifting them back onto their feet.
The Rangers have done more stops and starts in the standings than on the ice. Still, it doesn’t quite compute it has all come apart so quickly or the team has been at its worst in losing the last three by a combined score of 9-2 — just a week after being at its best in victories over the Flyers, Islanders and Capitals.
Tortorella’s postgame diatribe in Buffalo during which he smeared his team’s most important players was conduct unbecoming. Beyond that, it failed to produce the desired effect. This group had deaf ears.
It doesn’t compute that Marian Gaborik can’t thrive playing under Tortorella’s defense-oriented, hard-on-the-puck philosophy; not when the winger scored 40 or more goals in two of his first three seasons playing for this coach.
But it also does not compute that Tortorella would have shifted Gaborik, who had spent his entire career at right wing, to left wing … and moreover, would have stranded him there for more than two dozen games even after it had become painfully obvious the move was detrimental to the winger’s performance.
By doing this, Tortorella put Gaborik in a position to fail, which he has, stunningly, now with three goals in 22 games since Jan. 26, with all of them coming against the Islanders’ Evgeni Nabokov. Indeed, Gaborik has scored in only five of the Rangers’ 27 matches.
And now, the Blueshirts are seeking to move Gaborik again … this time out of town by the April 3 trade deadline. It’s going to be a tough sale at $7.5 million on the cap through next season, even tougher because the Rangers need value in return for No. 10, who has provided management with a list of 10 teams to which he cannot be dealt under terms of his no-trade clause.
If Gaborik were put in position to fail — and has acted as co-conspirator in his own demise — the same essentially is true regarding Chris Kreider. But this is one you could see coming pretty much from last year’s breakup day that followed elimination by the Devils.
The coach revels in tough love, and Kreider did aid and abet his own earlier failure with nondescript play. The difference in tone, however, between Tortorella’s public expressions of skepticism toward Kreider and his boundless support of J.T. Miller has been striking.
The big club has a crying need for Kreider’s offensive punch and speed, but a recall from the AHL Whale, for whom the winger has scored six goals in eight games since his Feb. 28 demotion, only makes sense if Tortorella allows the kid to breathe and play without fear of benching or banishment with every mistake.
A recall only makes sense if Kreider slots into an offensive role that includes power-play time. Everyone on this team has been allowed to fail … everyone except Kreider, for the most part. But there are certain players — and this is going to raise the coach’s hackles, but Sean Avery is the best example of this — who just cannot earn Tortorella’s trust.
Look, it’s not the system that is necessarily flawed, not when the system — supported by Henrik Lundqvist’s best season — was in place when the Rangers recorded the NHL’s second-best record a year ago.
But last year, Tortorella got the most out of his players. This year, he is not. Last year, the Rangers were Black-and-Blueshirts and last year, the Rangers were Stanley Cup contenders. This year, they are neither.