Thank goodness that The Little Big Man was at least honest about it. Because while Theo Fleury gave high marks to Dave Checketts and Neil Smith for their concerted effort to make him feel both wanted and needed, he also acknowledged that as of July 1, he had basically become an unrestricted free agent with nowhere else but New York to go.
“Were there any other competitive offers?” someone asked Fleury during yesterday’s conference call to announce his enlistment with the Rangers.
“Not really,” he answered.
And so in answering that way, Fleury, who signed a three-year, $21 million deal with a virtual no-trade guarantee and club option for a fourth year at an additional $7M, did all the explaining necessary to define his rapid conversion from Broadwayphobe to Broadwayphile.
This is a difficult signing to assess. Clearly, the Rangers in Fleury have added a pedigree of charisma, speed, grit, and goal-scoring uncommon throughout the league. But at the same time the Rangers in Fleury have added a player Colorado didn’t want to retain after a disastrous playoff performance against Dallas, notwithstanding that the Avalanche had traded three players to get him in February. The Avalanche didn’t want him back even though they were also losing Valeri Kamensky to free agency, and Peter Forsberg for the first three months of the season to shoulder surgery.
They have also added a player who, despite Wayne Gretzky’s personal pleas last winter, never before July 1 wanted to play on the East Coast, much less in New York. They have added a player who could not attract more than a nibble from any team on the West Coast, despite stating as late as June 30 that he hoped to stay out west. They are adding a player who is 5-6, 165 pounds, and who suffers from Crohn’s Disease and ulcers.
But the Rangers have also added a player who at his best will light up The Great White Way while providing an energy supply to the region that would make Con Edison envious. Despite going the final nine games of the playoffs without scoring a goal, Fleury did get 40 during the regular season last year, a total that included 10 goals in 15 matches with Colorado following his Feb. 28 trade from Calgary. He has scored 40 or more goals four times in his career, including 51 in 1990-91.
“In Theo, we’re getting almost everything we lacked,” said Smith, who, accompanied by Checketts, flew to Winnipeg last Thursday for a face-to-face recruiting session with Fleury’s agent, Don Baizley. “He has the fire, intensity and antagonistic side of a Todd Harvey. He’s an extremely fast player, whose speed is one of his biggest weapons. And then there’s his obvious goal-scoring ability.”
Fleury, who played primarily on a line with Joe Sakic and Milan Hejduk in Colorado, is likely to at least open training camp on Petr Nedved’s right side. He may find Kamensky, who signed a four-year, $17M guaranteed deal with the Rangers on Tuesday, on his left.
“I didn’t want to be in the same position as I was in Calgary, where the support was minimal,” said Fleury, who won the Cup with the Flames as a rookie in 1989, but then never won another playoff series until this year, when the Avalanche advanced to the Western Finals. “It’s hard to take that kind of a burden and pressure all the time.
“Actually, I think I was under-appreciated in Calgary. But here, with Mike Richter, Brian Leetch, Kamensky, Nedved, Stephane Quintal, there’s a solid core. I won’t have to play with the pressure of an entire city on my shoulders. And the electricity and the atmosphere of playing at Madison Square Garden are very, very exciting.
“The bottom line for me is that I’m a guy who loves to play. New York is an exciting, exciting place. I’m a guy who feeds off of that.”
In the end, though, the bottom line was that Smith and Checketts made Fleury feel wanted, when nobody else did.
“You want to be wanted,” Fleury said. “It’s nice to be wanted.”
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Ranger payroll as of this morning is $55 million, which includes 15 NHL players under contract plus qualifying offers out to unsigned Group II free agents Mathieu Schneider, Mike Knuble, Darren Langdon, Rumun Ndur and Jason Doig. This does not account for Pavel Brendl or Jan Hlavac.
Neither does the $55M include a cent devoted to a second-line center, a checking center, an additional defenseman or a back-up goaltender. In other words, the Rangers are clearly on their way to a $70M payroll … Including their respective signing bonuses, Fleury this year will earn $8.5M while Kamensky will receive $6M and Quintal, $3.95m.