Sports

RANGER REBUILDING STARTS WITH SLATS

THE sophomoric domestic squabble in Edmonton among the Keystone Kops 37-man ownership committee was not only spinning out of control, it was spilling into the conference finals and threatening to create a food fight of a distraction to the Stanley Cup Finals themselves.

Which is why late Thursday night Gary Bettman took to his bully pulpit, worked the phones and all but effected Glen Sather’s resignation and subsequent release from any and all contractual restraints that tied him to the Oilers. The commissioner’s own private power play in this case, by the way, is reminiscent of the art of persuasion he invoked in January with Carolina owner Peter Karmanos to put an end to all of the Keith Primeau trade-veto nonsense that had become an embarrassment to the NHL.

And so the Garden now has a free road to Sather, the man Charles Dolan had targeted to bring strength and credibility back to the Rangers from the very moment of Neil Smith’s Mar. 28 dismissal.

Why wouldn’t Cablevision’s CEO have wanted Sather? That’s the name he’d had recommended to him by Bettman; that’s the name he’d had recommended to him by Wayne Gretzky.

Know this about Gretzky. He has always remained loyal to those who were loyal to him, which is why The Great One has remained very close to Charles and Jim Dolan both, powerful bottom-line oriented businessmen who nevertheless were willing to grant Gretzky’s release to a championship contender a year ago in order to keep him in the league if that had been No. 99’s wish.

The presumption that Gretzky and Sather are somehow linked in Phoenix is, according to a number of individuals familiar with the Coyote ownership maneuverings, an erroneous one. In fact, any number of well-placed sources over the last 24 hours have expressed serious doubt that prospective buyer Steve Ellman will in fact be able to get the money together to make even next Friday’s extended deadline for a $10 million installment on the team.

In fact, the more you look at Ellman, you more you see a close to resemblance to John Spano; without the criminal intent, of course.

But even if Ellman, with or without Gretzky, does in fact attract enough investors to enable him to complete the purchase of the team from Richard Burke, we’re told by informants that he’s projecting losses of at least $11 million a year until the Coyotes are able to move into their new Scottsdale arena. Which means he has every intention of watching his budget very, very carefully. Gretzky knows this. So does Sather.

And while Sather, who won’t be going anywhere on the cheap, can obviously defer compensation or accept ownership equity against salary, he has little interest in moving from one small-market situation in which money was tight to another in which money is tight.

No, unless the owners in L.A. or San Jose unexpected awaken from their stupor and unleash an all-court press to attract Sather – now wouldn’t it be interesting if the Kings or Sharks put together a proposal for both Gretzky and Sather? – it is all but certain that Boss Oiler will be coming to Broadway, and sooner rather than later.

Again; unless there’s a dramatic turn of events, we’d now expect the coronation on Broadway to take place well before the June 24 Entry Draft, though we are aware that Sather received at least one inquiry from elsewhere – Toronto is a possibility – yesterday.

We keep hearing three years as the term the Rangers and Sather are mutually comfortable with regarding his contract – the salary is expected to be around $3M per, with the inclusion of stock options creating a monster score for the GM, who has always bargained as hard for himself as he has for his team – which leaves the distinct possibility that Sather and Gretzky will reunite somewhere on the West Coast in 2003.

What’s more, a term of three years also creates the distinct possibility that Sather will being Kevin Lowe here with him from Edmonton to become the Rangers’ head coach and heir to the GM throne. If that indeed becomes the scenario, the Rangers will have hit a walk-off grand slam home run.

Lowe is now the leading candidate to become GM in Edmonton, but you have to wonder why on earth he’d want to work for an ownership board so self-destructive that it maneuvered for months to force Sather out of the town he has owned for almost a quarter of a century, why on earth he’d want to work for the small-minded Cal Nichols.

Know this. While the Rangers are gaining instant respect here, while the league’s most important market is gaining one of the great media-players extant, small-market Canada has now lost its greatest, most credible voice. Players ultimately were willing to sign for less in Edmonton because of their respect for Sather, no matter how hard they swallowed while doing so; it’s unlikely they will be willing to do that for anyone else. To that extent, Edmonton now might as well be Calgary.

New York’s gain is Canada’s loss.

We’ve said before that Sather would not have been our first choice here, we’re not going to pretend otherwise. We had concerns about the wisdom of bribing an individual who had long disdained the concept of moving to Manhattan to do so. We had concerns about hiring an individual whose resume already seemed complete. We had (and have) concerns about hiring an individual whose recent draft record makes Smith look like Sam Pollock.

But this isn’t a bribe; Sather, incredibly, was kicked out of Edmonton. And, we’ve been assured by individuals we’ve come to trust implicitly that Sather has no intention of coming to New York to rest on his laurels, has no intention of coming here to enjoy a life of semi-retirement. Indeed, we’ve been assured that Sather is hungry to build on his reputation, hungry to rebuild the Rangers; hungry to become the first GM to win Cups with more than one team since Tommy Gorman did it in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s with the old Senators, the old Maroons, the Blackhawks and the Canadiens.

And ,oh yes: there’s this other little bauble, too.

With Sather, perhaps with Lowe, maybe also with Craig MacTavish, you can now safely expect the return of Mark Messier, free from his obligation to Vancouver on July 1.

For if the Garden door for The Captain’s return was opened upon Smith’s dismissal – the presence of the GM whom Messier detests negated the possibility of No. 11 agreeing to a trade-deadline journey back home – a welcome mat with the letter “C” on it has now been placed on Broadway.