In this What Have You Done For Me in the Last Five Minutes Society into which we’ve morphed, it is easy to forget the foundation for rousing triumphs and victory salutes to the Garden crowd, such as the ones we witnessed from the Rangers yesterday, was largely laid by Tom Renney, who got to see it all up close and personal from the wrong bench.
That Renney’s Oilers were as defenseless against the Blueshirts in their 8-2 defeat as Ladislav Smid chose to make himself after confronting Sean Avery at 11:18 of the third period does not alter a single bit of the history Rangers management chose not to acknowledge via any sort of scoreboard visual or graphic in the coach’s first visit to the Garden since Feb. 22, 2009, the night of the final game he spent behind the home team bench.
There are horses for courses, candidates for campaigns, right people at the right time in the right place, and Renney was that person when he was tabbed by general manager Glen Sather to lead the Blueshirts out of the abyss into which they had fallen in 1997 and remained buried for the seven seasons immediately preceding the 2004-05 lockout.
Renney was precisely the right man to partner with Jaromir Jagr and allow No. 68 to turn his little patch of Manhattan into Prague, N.Y.
Renney was precisely the right man to restore pride to a club that had become overrun with mercenaries. He had the perfect temperament. He represented the Rangers and the city with dignity. That always counts for something, even if it never guarantees two points.
“I worked hard here and tried to do the right thing every single day,” Renney said before Marian Gaborik’s hat trick sparked the rout that devolved into fiasco once Avery popped Smid in the face. “I tried to represent the organization the best I could with openness, honesty and accessibility.”
Renney left behind a base from which John Tortorella could operate as his successor, even if only five Rangers who were on the ice yesterday — Avery, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal, Ryan Callahan and Brandon Dubinsky — wore the Blueshirt when Renney was behind their bench.
“I hope history will say that I left behind a little bit of humility and a competitive spirit,” said Renney, the fourth-winningest coach in franchise history behind Emile Francis, Lester Patrick and Frank Boucher. “I think I left some kind of foundation to build off for the young people who are still here.”
Renney rode Jagr the way Tortorella rides Gaborik, but Renney didn’t necessarily load up on ice time for his most talented players the way the current coach does. That deficiency, reflecting a commitment to getting the fourth line time it didn’t generally warrant, helped accelerate his departure.
Renney has the professorial look while Tortorella can often appear in the guise of a nihilist. Interestingly, though, Renney did not seem to have the patience Tortorella does for developing youth.
Perhaps the former coach didn’t have the same caliber stable the current one owns, but Renney always seemed more reactionary to mistakes made by kids than Tortorella.
It wasn’t much of a game at the Garden yesterday, but that doesn’t diminish the return of a big-time former coach who deserves appreciation for his role in the Rangers’ return to credibility after seven long seasons as a laughingstock.