NO one around here has greater regard for Mark Messier or what he has meant to the Rangers than I. It’s well documented that I believe his management-orchestrated 1997 exit was a terrible mistake. It also is well known that I enthusiastically supported his return three summers ago.
But this is 2003, and in 16 days Messier will celebrate his 42d birthday while playing in a league that gets younger and bigger and faster with every single revolution of the Earth. If the Rangers are going to move forward and climb out of the six-foot ditch they dug for themselves the first half of the season, they must – simply must – be willing to reduce The Captain’s role and turn over the club to Eric Lindros and Bobby Holik.
It’s the only way.
Unless Glen Sather is keeping a secret better than anyone, Bryan Trottier will be running today’s practice and he will be running the bench on Saturday, when the Rangers meet the Caps in Saturday’s opener of a three-game homestand. If Trottier is going to be more successful the second half of the season than the first, he is going to have to commit to leaning on Lindros and Holik the way he did in Carolina on Tuesday, when injuries to Messier and Petr Nedved left him no other option.
The coach is going to have to turn over the team to them – and, upon his return in approximately another four weeks from his twin arthroscopies, to Pavel Bure.
These are the faces and strengths of the team. There is no way around it, even if the hierarchy has seemed to go out of its way to try to do just that. Commitment to taking the body and to sacrificing on the defensive side of the puck; Mike Dunham (the best Ranger since his arrival three weeks ago); and an attack featuring Lindros, Holik and Bure above the marquee. This is the only formula for the Rangers to follow.
Messier is playing as hard and as well as he can. But the suggestion that he can – or should – be getting 17-20 minutes a night while working on the power-play- and penalty-kill units is outlandish.
Those hockey sophisticates who prattle on about all the Rangers’ skill and talent don’t know what they’re talking about. The NHL has become a league of one-on-one battles, of who’s going to win the puck, of who’s going to be able to move forward in a ground war. That’s no longer Messier’s game.
Until Bure returns, Holik and Lindros together need 22-25 minutes a night. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t double-shift and set a tone early. Honestly; who exactly is going to be able to handle them? Who wants to deal with the Lindros we saw in Tuesday’s 2-0 victory? Who ever wants to deal with Holik, now healthy and picking up where he left off across the Hudson?
And when Bure does come back, he needs to play 22-25 minutes with Lindros and the Rangers then need to construct a checking line around Holik. The Rangers have to set those first two lines, they have to establish those two strengths, and then fill in all of the blanks after that. If that means there’s less remaining for Nedved, so be it. If that means less for Messier, that’s what it means.
When Trottier played in Pittsburgh his final two years, neither Bob Johnson nor Scotty Bowman had trouble transforming the all-time center into a role player. And Trottier won the final two of his six Cups as a result.
There are 41 games to go. If there is to be a season, it is time to turn, turn, turn … the team over to Lindros and Holik.