When Barry Melrose’s Lightning played the Rangers three times early in the season, he expected the Blueshirts to be contending for a Stanley Cup title.
Four and a half months later, the Rangers will be lucky to make the playoffs.
“They don’t compete now,” said Melrose, who is back with ESPN after Tampa Bay fired him 16 games into the season.
“They are a very easy team to play against and they weren’t like that at the start of the year. They aren’t hunting the puck, they aren’t playing that way at all any more. They have been the biggest disappointment in the NHL with all that talent.”
The team’s fall from grace and in the standings cost coach Tom Renney his job. He was fired and replaced by John Tortorella on Monday. An unfortunate but necessary move, said Rangers’ MSG analyst Joe Micheletti.
“(GM Glen) Sather wanted to give them enough time to see if they can get out of the malaise they were in and they just weren’t getting out of it,” Micheletti said. “It’s that old cliché: You can’t trade all the players, so it’s easier just to change coaches.”
By most accounts, Renney was a solid coach and the blame should not have fallen solely on his shoulders, but on the high-priced players who were struggling night in and night out in the middle of a playoff race. Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Wade Redden top the list.
“Gomez and Drury are both great players, but they aren’t great right now,” Melrose said. “And Redden has been terrible. It’s been a team effort to get them to this point.”
Sather and the Rangers are hoping that the fiery Tortorella can pull the Rangers out of their slump with 19 games left on their schedule. The Rangers have a pair of winnable games this week, against the Avalanche and Islanders, before taking on the Eastern Conference-leading Bruins at home. Then a pivotal three-game road trip that starts in Carolina against the Hurricanes, who along with the Penguins, are stalking one of the final playoff spots that the Rangers are clinging to.
But Micheletti said he believes that a lack of motivation has not been the problem for this team.
“I don’t think it is motivation, because Drury and Gomez – these are guys that wanted to come to New York, to the Rangers and be successful,” Micheletti said. “That’s their motivation. Things just started swirling the other way and then there’s this frustration, there’s pressure and then you put these things together and it ends up the way it has.”
Tortorella was famous for his abrasive attitude when he coached the Lightning to the 2004 Stanley Cup title, but Micheletti said he brings more than that to the Rangers.
“He is a no-nonsense guy, but what you don’t hear is that this guy is a tireless worker,” Micheletti said.
“When things weren’t going well in Tampa Bay and the team was coming back from a road trip, Tortorella would go to the dark arena by himself and just watch film all night. He is an extremely hard-working coach.
. . . And this isn’t a knock against Tom, but the Rangers have a better chance of making the playoffs right now than they did last week.”