As the summer winds down and Rangers fans begin to get a clearer picture of what the roster will resemble come opening night, the biggest question I have been pondering is what John Tortorella will do with this semi-mediocre, semi-talented roster this season. Despite the mostly solid moves Sather has made this summer, the Rangers still lack enough talent to be considered an elite team.
They still lack a top playmaking center, they still lack another 30+ goal scorer and they still lack an intimidating stay-at-home defensemen or another puck mover, which Redden was supposed to be. Sather addressed the secondary scoring issue with the signing of Alexander Frolov, but even if he has a good year, it still may not be enough.
It will help if Dubinsky continues to improve as a gritty powerforward, if Anisimov can take the next step as a young two-way center, and if Chris Drury can regain his status as a 50-60 point guy. But that is asking a lot for one season. Especially when you have journeyman Erik Christensen expected to center Gaborik and 35 year old Vinny Prospal expected to hit 60 points again. If all else fails hopefully one of these prospects like Evgeny Grachev or Derek Stepan can make the jump from the farm.
Defensively, the Rangers have just as many question marks as they do at forward. All the chatter this summer has been about the possible demotion of Wade Redden to the AHL. Doing so would of course remove the $6.5 million cap hit he carries thus allowing Sather some flexibility, but that would leave us with Michal Rozsival as the lone veteran on the blueline. Luckily the Rangers have some of the best young defensemen in the conference in Marc Staal and Michael Del Zotto. Plus big blueliner Ryan McDonagh is expected to come up from the minors at some point this season as well. So there is no doubt a youth movement going on in some of the most important parts of the lineup, which ultimately leads my thoughts back to coach Tortorella.
What I love about Torts is his blatant honesty. I mean how can you not like when a coach calls out expensive underachieving veterans, or when he diminishes their ice time (Drury) or when he just simply benches them (Redden). Torts is pretty consistent in that regard too. He was the same way in Tampa when he called out Lecavalier, Prospal, and Mike Smith for underachieving. He even ripped former Lightning owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie for trading Dan Boyle despite promising him he'd be locked up and he took jabs at them again when he referred to the Andrej Meszaros trade as "a hell of a deal" for the Ottawa Senators.
The point of all this is his propensity to be ruthlessly blunt is fine when you are dealing with bad owners, over opinionated writers of the NY Post, or underachieving veterans, but what about 19 year old kids just breaking into the NHL? Can he actually teach these young kids to be professionals when he himself often comes across as anything but? Gilroy got benched for over committing on the rush and Del Zotto too got berated for similar allegations, but isn't that the essence of Tortorella's aggressive style?
For a young kid coming into this organization I can see how it can be confusing to sometimes not know the difference between appeasing your coach and down right pissing him off. Hopefully behind closed doors he is as good a teacher and coach as he is an entertainer. Hopefully he can find a way to get the veterans off their asses while bringing along our young talent to the next level, because after all he is "the leader of the big old band."
