SO NOW Glen Sather sits, anticipating follow-up meetings with candidates he deemed unacceptable the first time around, waiting for permission to speak to “B”-list assistants whose teams are still playing. Who knows? Maybe out of all this, the Rangers get themselves the NHL’s next great head coach. Didn’t the football Giants want Howard Schnellenberger instead of Bill Parcells?
Look, Ken Hitchcock wasn’t the right man for the job and Herb Brooks this week proved he wasn’t the right man for any job requiring a 24/7 commitment, so it’s no problem for me that the neon vacancy sign above the coach’s door is still lit. I don’t think Sather did anything wrong last week.
It is, however, very disturbing that Sather won’t pick up the phone now and call Ron Wilson. Disturbing that Wilson, an accomplished, if headstrong, individual isn’t even deemed worthy of an interview but a Vancouver assistant named Mike Johnston is. It’s disturbing that Wilson joins another accomplished, headstrong individual named Pat Burns on what appears to be a blue list of winners who can’t get in the door to the GM’s western White House.
Yes, it’s true, Wilson could pick up the phone himself and call Sather, and if he wants the job he probably should. But what is this, high school? Who cares who makes the first call? If I’m not mistaken, it was Dave Checketts who called Sather when the Garden was seeking a replacement for Neil Smith, not Sather who sought permission from Edmonton ownership to initiate a dialogue with the Rangers. If Sather is standing on some kind of self-imposed ceremony here while a qualified candidate slips away, that’s unacceptable.
There’s no excuse to eliminate good people for no good reason. Sather hasn’t liked Wilson at all since the wise-alec’s Team USA beat him and Team Canada for the World Cup in 1996. The GM has never been able to put that behind him. It’s time he did. If he thinks that Wilson was arrogant and disrespectful throughout the tournament, Sather should look in the mirror. If he does, he’ll see they were two of a kind.
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It is one thing to be methodical in a coaching search, quite another to be passive in the free-agent market. What I am saying is, when the bell rings at 12:00:01 a.m. on July 1, Sather had best be doing the speed-dialing and not waiting for anyone to come to him. He and the Rangers are the needy ones, not the Group III’s and their respective representatives.
A new twist to the story of Mike Keane being traded by the Blues to the Avalanche: Just after the Olympics, Slap Shots has learned, Keane met with St. Louis coach Joel Quenneville to tell him that the team would never win the Stanley Cup with Chris Pronger as captain; that the 27-year-old defenseman – who won both the 2000 Hart and Norris Trophies – did not treat people with respect and was neither a leader nor a winner. Keane, alive for his fourth Cup, was sent away within the fortnight.
It couldn’t be true what we’ve been told, could it, that Lou Lamoriello refused to allow any of his organization’s young Americans to compete in the World Championships?
Billy Guerin, we’ve learned, has given the Bruins his price: Forty million dollars over four years. Call us crazy, but we have the sense that the winger will be available on July 1.
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How about those small-market teams needing both a new CBA and the league that appears committed to shutting the sport down in 2004 in order to get them one?
Like Ottawa, which two months ago needed the NHL to front the franchise TV money in order to make payroll . . . Ottawa, which no doubt will be weeping about how unfair the system is when they have to pay Daniel Alfredsson this summer.
The Senators will rail against the inequity of it all when the 29-year-old winger, who scored 37 goals while earning $3 million this year, wants somewhere between $4.5-5M next season, they’ll scream that they just cannot afford it. But they won’t remind anyone that they themselves declined to sign Alfredsson to a two-year, $7M deal last summer.
And like Buffalo, which just has to have cost certainty in order to survive . . . Buffalo, whose Rigas family ownership is under investigation by the SEC for fraud and may be required to file for bankruptcy.
Makes sense; let’s shut down the NHL in 2004 for the Rigas family.
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Finally, isn’t it time for the GM to stop by Hilton Head for a beer and, you know, kind of get an idea what The Captain’s thinking?