IT’S fine for Tom Renney to call out “very key members of our hockey club who need to better,” as he did without naming names following Saturday’s 4-2 loss at the Garden to the Devils, but the head coach’s words won’t mean a thing unless he’s willing to back them up.
Which means benching and/or scratching those athletes who consistently fail to play to their capabilities, regardless of the names on the back of their uniforms, the letters on the front, or the numbers on their paychecks.
And that means Chris Drury, the captain who has had a distinctly disappointing Year II on Broadway. That means Scott Gomez, the alternate captain who is playing the worst hockey of his life. That means Wade Redden, who for most of the season has appeared so unaccountably detached from the action around him.
That also means beginning with tonight, when the Islanders come to the Garden to face a Rangers team in the midst of a mid-season crisis.
Because if not now, when?
Can a head coach begin to enforce accountability after 38 games of coddling his athletes by appealing to their pride and professionalism? Can, say, Gomez or Drury be benched now when, say, Redden, Michal Rozsival and Dmitri Kalinin weren’t when it was called for earlier in the season?
This head coach had better, because if not now from Renney, the “when” will be determined by his replacement. You can make book on that.
That enforcement of accountability is presumably what Renney was talking about following yesterday’s practice that Gomez missed with a touch of the flu but that included Rozsival, who missed Saturday’s game because of an illness within his family.
“I think I might start to use other tools that are part of my personality,” Renney said. “Discipline needs to be featured every game and it needs to be [demanded] by the coach.
“We have to push the envelope on what is [required], and if there need to be consequences, I’m prepared to deal with that.”
There will be changes in tonight’s alignment. The Gomez-Markus Naslund-Nikolai Zherdev combination that seemed so compatible on paper, but wasn’t even competent on the ice, will become a discontinued product.
Brandon Dubinsky will be reunited with Zherdev, who was all too often invisible on Gomez’ right side. Petr Prucha or Lauri Korpikoski – a force against New Jersey – will be the left wing.
Gomez, presuming he’s healthy enough to go, will skate between Naslund and either Korpikoski or Prucha.
Still, it’s up to Renney to do more than rearrange the chess pieces on the board. It’s up to Renney and the coaching staff to take control of this crisis that’s mounting by the day.
Because, again, if this coaching staff that has gone unchanged since the lockout, by the way, while 66 different players have suited up, cannot take control of the situation, the situation will take control of them.
As a politician says in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange: “Enough of words. Actions speak louder than.”