You don’t have to squint all that hard to read between the lines of the “Clean Slate…Grab it” motto the Rangers are wearing on their sleeves — and their training camp T-shirts — in order to deduce this fresh start everyone, but everyone, apparently craves is as close to an organizational repudiation of the John Tortorella Era as anything you’re ever going to get.
About the only way it would be more obvious is if the players had been issued licensed apparel bearing the phrase, “Ding Dong the Witch is dead.”
Seriously, it’s as if the Rangers couldn’t wait to rinse the taste of the last four-plus seasons out of their mouths, even though the club achieved a reasonable measure of progress and success under Tortorella, who took the baton from Tom Renney and advanced it, though he, like every coach other than Mike Keenan over the last 73 years, fell short of the finish line.
Tortorella wasn’t fired due to a lack of results. He was fired as a matter of style as much as substance. The yelling and screaming, the constant browbeating during, between and before games, took their toll. So did a style that grew more conservative by the day and seemed to stifle the Rangers every bit as much as their opponents.
Clean slate. Fresh start. For a team that has made the playoffs seven of the past eight seasons — four out of five under Tortorella — and is one of only two teams in the NHL (along with the Kings) to have won at least one playoff round each of the past two years.
“I guess everyone can analyze the hell out of it, but I’m not looking into it all that deep,” Brad Richards told The Post before Monday’s exhibition-opening 2-1 defeat to the Devils in Newark. “To me, it’s about the fresh start a team gets when there’s a new coaching staff.
“It’s not as if we’re looking to erase what’s been built here over the last few years. One thing that’s been instilled is a professional work ethic, and it’s already been talked about in team meetings that we don’t want that to go anywhere. The work ethic is why the Rangers have gotten back on track as opposed to where they were at the start of my career [before the canceled 2004-05 season].
“Now, we’re at the stage where we’ve brought in a new coach to take that foundation and become better. We want to keep that work ethic and be creative in an environment where we’re allowed to play the game the way it’s meant to be played.”
That means at both ends of the ice, not only in the defensive zone. That means by looking to make plays, not only prevent them. No one wearing a Rangers’ uniform or T-shirt is inclined to bury Tortorella, but it is obvious a critical mass of players had grown psychologically and physically weary of trying to win games 1-0 while being berated for their failings.
The love had gone out the tough-love relationship.
“I don’t think the idea is to throw everything out that came before,” Henrik Lundqvist said. “But of course there is going to be a different feeling and different philosophy when there is a coaching change.
“It’s the same thing now as when it was when Torts came in and Tom [Renney], Perry [Pearn] and Mike [Pelino] left. It means a new start where everyone comes in with an open mind and without baggage.
“But it’s still up to the players to create an environment that we can enjoy and where we can perform to our maximum capabilities. The coaches have a big impact but it starts in here, in the room, with the leaders leading.”
It is training camp; less than a week in, no less. It is way, way, way too early to draw any credible conclusions about the impact of the regime change — except change in the air is obvious.
“It’s totally different,” said Richards, on the other side of the equivalent of a bad divorce from Tortorella. “You have to live in it to be able to fully appreciate and understand it, but you can just feel it.”
Clean slate. Fresh start. Which old witch?
The wicked witch.