Posted: 4:16 am
July 20, 2008
ALL right. Here are the questions. Some of them, at least.
A limited no-trade clause on top of $39M over six years to get Wade Redden to sign, a full no move on top of $8M over two years to get Markus Naslund to commit, and doesn't it seem as if the Rangers are back to where they were before the lockout, bribing overpriced free agents to come to New York?
If the Rangers didn't want to bring back Sean Avery, if he was such a destructive influence, why in the world did Glen Sather offer him a four-year contract for $12M?
What if Avery had come to the conclusion that $3M a year in New York was worth more to him than the $3.875M per for which he ultimately signed in Dallas?
What if he had taken the Rangers' offer? Then what?
And again, if Sather indeed did want to sign him, how could $1M a year be the breaking point? You know what $1M is? It's Patrick Rissmiller. That's what it is.
Did Sather lose Avery so he could sign Rissmiller?
Really?
If the Rangers didn't want to bring back Jaromir Jagr, why didn't Sather tell him that face to face, rather than in a brief phone conversation some 20 minutes before the unilateral decision was announced on a conference call with the media?
Why in the world didn't Sather schedule a meeting with Jagr in June so the general manager and captain could at least discuss their respective visions of the future?
Was this some kind of payback for Jagr's yearlong public flirtation with Omsk that annoyed some Rangers when it continued into April, but was really only Jaromir being Jaromir?
And if the Rangers did want to sign No. 68, what, we're supposed to believe Sather just forgot to tell him that while the GM was spending his money on everyone else the first three days of July?
If the Rangers don't want Brendan Shanahan, don't you think that Sather would tell him that face-to-face instead of delivering exactly the opposite message in conference calls with the media, if not to Shanahan himself, either directly or indirectly?
Are we supposed to believe that Shanahan at $2M (Slap Shots' hypothetical number, not anyone else's) doesn't have value worth at least the combined investment of Rissmiller and Dan Fritsche or Fredrik Sjostrom?
What's the worst that could happen if Shanahan has a bad training camp and/or first six weeks of the season. That he would be released?
