Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

A year ago, I took Rangers' G.M. Glen Sather to task. The Rangers had just been been rudely bounced by the Boston Bruins in the second round of the playoffs and Sather "relieved" John Tortorella of his coaching duties. While no one was shedding any tears over Torts' exit, Sather, I felt, had to share in the blame for the team's dismal performance.

Since being hired by the Rangers, Sather has had a rather strange and often bewildering tenure. He hired former Islander center Brian Trottier as coach, then fired him 54 games into the season. Sather hired Tom Renney, who led the team to four consecutive playoff appearances. But when Renney couldn't get passed the second round of the playoffs, he was replaced by Tortorella. In 2012, Tortorella coached the Blueshirts to the conference finals, only to lose to the New Jersey Devils. It was generally acknowledged by many that it was Tortorella's style of coaching, combined with his shortening of the bench, that contributed to the team's failure to advance to the finals. They simply ran out of gas.

While Sather was responsible for drafting players like Henrik Lundqvist, Ryan Callahan and Marc Staal, he's also been responsible for some of the worst free-agent signings in the club's history, like Eric Lindros, Chris Drury and Scott Gomez. Yes, he signed Marion Gaborik, but when the winger wound up in Tortorella's doghouse, Sather traded him away. And while he did get Derick Brassard in return, Gaborik leads all players in goals in this year's playoffs with 11. The nightmare that was the 2012-13 season was as much Sather's fault as it was Tortorella's.

But if it was fair to hold Sather accountable for the wheels falling off last season, it is now equally fair to give him credit for the team's resurgence this season.

Of all the moves Sather has made, perhaps none were more critical then the signing of Alain Vigneault as head coach. It goes without saying that Vigneault was the polar opposite of Tortorella. While Tortorella ran his players ragged, played favorites and often chewed them out in public, Vigneault has treated them like adults, gotten valuable contributions from his role players and has earned the respect of the entire team. His calm and collected persona was the perfect tonic for a team that, for over four years, lived under a reign of terror.

By rotating four lines throughout the playoffs, Vigneault has managed to keep his team fresh. Thursday night's conference-final finale was a text-book case of how to coach a team. The Rangers speed and relentless forechecking pinned a Canadiens team that looked exhausted in their zone most of the night. The only goal of the game was fittingly scored by the fourth line. Under Tortorella, they would never have seen the ice so late in the game.

But Sather didn't stop with just hiring the perfect head coach. His controversial decision not to buy out Brad Richards' contract could have blown up in his face. Had Richards not rebounded this season and decided to retire afterwards, the Rangers would've been stuck with almost $6 million of the remaining $17 million Richards is owed against their cap. That would've been a huge pill to swallow. But Sather rolled the dice and, so far, has been rewarded. Richards has been one of the team's strongest leaders and steadiest players.

The story gets better. Sather's most difficult decision was to trade his captain, Ryan Callahan, who was demanding more money than the team was willing to pay him, to Tampa for winger Marty St. Louis. Throughout the balance of the regular season, the trade looked very much like a bust for the Rangers. But in the playoffs, St. Louis has been a valuable cog in this improbable run. The tragic passing of his mother acted as a springboard for a team that was trailing three games to one against the Penguins and looked dead in the water. Since then, the team has won seven of nine games and is now four wins away from its first Stanley Cup in twenty years.

But perhaps Sather's most clever move as G.M. occurred five years ago when he stole defenseman Ryan McDonagh from the Montreal Canadiens for Scott Gomez. McDonagh has not only been the Rangers' best blue liner this season, he's tied with Derek Stepan and St. Louis for the team lead in points this postseason with 13. Talk about redemption.

If the Rangers go on to win the Stanley Cup this year, Sather will have had a lot to do with it. He made all the correct moves when it counted. It will also mark the sixth time he has been the architect of a championship team; the other five coming with the Edmonton Oilers. He deserves much of the credit for climbing out of the hole he was partly to blame for digging.

He will also have the last laugh.

Close It Out

This has been a very strange and difficult to figure conference final series between the Rangers and Canadiens.

You could easily say that were it not for the outstanding goaltending of Montreal's Dustin Tokarski, this series would've ended last night with a four-game sweep. How bad have the Habs been in this series? By my count they've played three solid periods of hockey in four games. They've been slow and sloppy and their number one offensive player, P.K. Subban, has been, well, offesive.  Last night's power-goal was the first point he's had in the entire series.

Of course, the Rangers haven't been that much better. With the exception of game one's rout, they've been their own worst enemy. Yes, they've been the better team, but let's face it, that's not saying much. Consider this: if the Canadiens had managed to score just one more power play goal last night, as strange as it might seem, this series would actually be tied with the Blueshirts going back to Montreal and their backs against the wall.

Funny game, hockey. A bounce here, a bounce there. Last night's game was about as sloppy as you could get. The Rangers had to kill off eight penalties, five of them committed in the offensive zone. As a result, they never got their forecheck or speed game going. And yet they still managed to score three goals, all of them off of defensive lapses on the part of the Canadiens; the last one coming in overtime from Marty St. Louis, who took a brilliant pass from Carl Hagelin and went top shelf on Tokarski. With all the talk about the goaltenders in this series, Hagelin has been, by far, the best player on either side.

And now the Rangers find themselves in a rather unusual and unfamiliar position. They are up three games to one. They have three chances to close out their opponent. They haven't been this fortunate since they swept the Atlanta Thrashers in '07. So what will they do?

If I'm the Rangers, I close this sucker out Tuesday night. I would not look a gift horse in the mouth. There is no guarantee that the Rangers would win a game six at home. And, should they lose game six, it's over. No way they win a game seven in Montreal. Ask the Penguins what happened to them after they blew a chance to close out the Rangers in five. You can bet the ranch Montreal has the tape of that game.

The Canadiens will throw the kitchen sink at the Rangers. They've done their best to goat the Blueshirts into scrums designed only to incite and distract them. Brandon Prust's late hit on Derek Stepan, which resulted in the latter sustaining a broken jaw, shows the lengths to which they will go to get the Rangers off their game.

It will be up to head coach Alain Vigneault to keep his cool and convince his team not to lose theirs. Vigneault has been nothing short of brilliant in these playoffs. After four plus years of enduring the ranting and raving of John Tortorella, Vigneault has been a breath of fresh air in the locker room. Compare and contrast him with his counterpart, Montreal coach Michel Therrien, whose "small world" comment concerning Derick Brassard's upper-body injury, was about as unprofessional and amateurish at it gets. Credit Vigneault for not biting on that poisoned apple.

Tuesday night, the Rangers have three objectives: resist the urge to retaliate when the Canadiens come after them; stay out of the penalty box; and throw as many pucks as they can at Tokarski. If they do that, they stand an excellent chance of getting some badly needed rest in preparation for a Stanley Cup final round against either the L.A. Kings or the Chicago Blackhawks.  If they don't, they could end up being only the third team in the last sixty-eight to blow a 3-1 conference final round lead.

It's been twenty years since the last championship. This might be the best chance a Rangers team has of drinking from the Cup for quite some time. It would be nothing short of catastrophic if they let it slip by.

Hab Nots

What to make of yesterday's drubbing of the Canadiens. On the one hand, the Rangers were quick on the puck, solid defensively and Henrik Lundqvist exorcized, for at least one game, his past demons in stopping 20 of 22 shots.

On the other hand, however, Montreal was simply dreadful. They were slow, sloppy and, for the better part of the game, seemed to be hungover from their game 7 victory over the Bruins. How bad were the Canadiens? They allowed the Rangers to score three power play goals, one of them by Rick Nash, whose last playoff goal, if memory serves, was scored sometime in 1911. They left their goalie, Carey Price, virtually naked and made Chris Kreider look like Steve Shutt. Thomas Vanek and P.K. Subban, second round heroes over the Bruins, were invisible.

And yet, even with all that, it was a 2-1 game until the 18:59 mark of the 2nd period. That was when Steve, er, Chris Kreider split through both Montreal defensemen for a breakaway goal. Fifty seconds later Brad Richards caught Carey Price leaning the wrong way and shot the puck past him. 4-1 Rangers after two. The third period seemed almost anticlimactic.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good laugher as much as the next fan. Of the Rangers' eight playoff wins coming into this series, six were nail biters. Indeed, both game 7s were as excruciating as they were exciting to watch. So it was a nice reprieve to not have to sweat out a third period for once. Trust me, I have enough gray hairs.

But a reprieve is all this was, period. If anyone thinks for a moment that game 2 is going to be the cakewalk game 1 was, they're delusional. The Canadiens are a very fast and very talented team. And very proud. Despite what all their players said after the game about putting this behind them, believe me, the way they played will stick in their craw. They will look to exact revenge on the Blueshirts in game 2. There is no way Montreal can lose both games at home and expect to win this series. They know that and so should the Rangers.

In the last round, the Rangers beat the Penguins in game 1 by out skating them. Pittsburgh couldn't contend with the Rangers' speed. Then, for some reason, they stopped skating and checking. The Penguins won the next three before the tragic death of Marty St. Louis's mother sparked an emotional resurgence and miraculous turnaround. The Rangers rolled off three consecutive and decisively emotional wins to oust the Pens.

Know this, if the Rangers pull that against the Canadiens, there will be no miracle comeback. No way in hell Montreal will blow a 3-1 series lead. They are considerably better, deeper, sounder and more resilient than Pittsburgh. You don't defeat the Eastern Conference champs by letting up. They know how to deliver a knockout punch; a trait which the Rangers have been sadly lacking.

It's also worth noting that the last time a Rangers team found itself up one game to none against a Canadians team was 1979 in the Cup finals. That was a fairly lopsided win, too, if I'm not mistaken.

We all know how that series turned out.