I Hate Being Wrong, Except When I'm Wrong

So they actually went through with it. Earlier today the Rangers fired head coach Tom Renney and assistant coach Perry Pearn. Maybe I’m just cursed, I have four teams that I follow intensely; in the past 7 months three of those teams fired the man in charge. Fittingly it is my only team that doesn’t play in America, Manchester United that is the exact opposite, showing stability and having a manager who has been in charge for just slightly longer then Gary Williams has been the basketball coach here at Maryland.

I can’t say anything about Eric Mangini, but I know I was against the firing of Willie Randolph, but Jerry Manuel seemed to light a fire under the Mets last year and initial reports out of spring training are filled with optimism. I recently made my case for Tom Renney, and Jim Kelly’s sports illustrated article seemed to fall right in line. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jim_kelley/02/19/rangers.mess/index.html?eref=T1). Kelly compares the management between the Rangers and the Devils, which ultimately has turned the Rangers into a joke.

Renney was 164-121-42 in 5 seasons with the Rangers. That’s a pretty good record for a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in 8 seasons. He was unfairly fired this year, as Kelly points out, “When your forwards are ineffective, your defense is incapable, your special teams are incompetent and your goaltender is inundated with shots, that's not bad coaching. That's an inept hockey team.” The fault here doesn’t fall onto Renney, you could make an argument that Perry Pearn, the man in charge of the Rangers terrible power play deserves to go, but not Renny, the fault here falls on the man who built the team. That team was put together by Sather, the man who fired Renney. Again the only person with the power to fire Sather is the inept James Dolan, whoever comes into New York should send Wade Redden down to the minors, and just wait until Dolan realizes how much he’s paying for a minor league player. That might be the only way for him to realize how bad the Rangers management was.

Unfortunately I don’t see the Rangers responding to this the way the Mets responded when their manager was fired. The Mets were a much better team then Willie was getting out of them. The Rangers on the other hand are a terrible team, and sometimes don’t even look like they know how to play hockey. The Rangers will likely miss the playoffs this year and we could probably start counting how many years their going to miss the playoffs again.

I just hope I’m wrong.