Seeing Wayne Gretzky behind the Phoenix bench Monday night at the Garden served as a reminder of just how few former Rangers have graduated to the team’s coaching staff, let alone the head coaching job, over the past three decades.
Glen Sather and Phil Esposito are the only two men over the last 32 years to have played for and coached the Rangers, and both did so temporarily while assuming the dual role as GM-coach. Sather replaced Bryan Trottier midway through the 2002-03 season and remained behind the bench until late in 2003-04, when he yielded to current boss Tom Renney.
Esposito served two terms as head coach, the second brief and memorable. Espo first replaced Tom Webster as head coach several times during the 1986-87 season when Webster became ill. Two years later, he memorably fired Michel Bergeron with two games remaining in the season, taking command himself for those two games and the first-round playoff series against the Penguins. The Rangers lost all six games and Esposito soon lost both his jobs.
The recent paucity of former Rangers behind the bench is an anomaly in franchise history. The first eight men to coach the club not only wore the Blueshirt, but the first five – Lester Patrick, Frank Boucher, Lynn Patrick, Neil Colville and Bill Cook – were inducted into the Hall of Fame for their play with the Rangers. Muzz Patrick, Phil Watson and Alf Pike followed.
The first time the Rangers hired a coach from outside the organization came in 1961-62, when, in their 35th season of operation, the Blueshirts named the great Doug Harvey as player-coach after acquiring the defenseman from Montreal. Harvey won the Norris Trophy and led the team to the 1962 playoffs, but was dismissed following the season.
Red Sullivan, a one-time Rangers captain, replaced Harvey. Sullivan was in turn replaced first by Muzz Patrick on an interim basis, then by GM Emile Francis, who, when not coaching himself, hired three former Blueshirts as interim replacements, those being Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion, Larry Popein and Ron Stewart. Not one of the three lasted so much as a season.