Happy Trails Tom

"I thought we played hard. Anything drastic, is to go outside of what the needs are right now. We are going to continue to play hard, stay the course, keep working hard (and) go after wins." --Tom Renney, after last night's loss

Sorry Tom, staying the course just isn't good enough. After staying up so late last night, I awoke to the news that Renney was canned, and I can't say I am shocked. I don't think anyone is.

Perry Pearn was also thankfully shown the door, something that should have happened at least a year ago, if not more. He openly admitted that the power play was his responsibility and the special team is more of a disaster than Penn Station at 3am on a Saturday night. Mike Pelino and Benoit Allaire kept their jobs, which is good because they are both capable and intelligent. Pelino has the players' ears and Allaire has made Hank into a top five NHL goaltender.

But back to Renney. Say what you will, the man coached the team to three straight playoff appearances. He managed to keep the enigmatic Jaromir Jagr interested while not letting the Sean Avery circus get out of hand. He brought back some honour and respect to a franchise that had failed so often since 1994 and was largely responsible for the lockout.

Don't fool yourself, firing Renney will not solve this team's woes. Glen Sather dragged the team down with big money signings at the turn over the century and he has done it again this last summer. The money mistakes won't be fixed by putting a firebrand behind the bench but it should help.

Renney too often threw his hands up, either not knowing what was going wrong or not being able to fix it. And when a coach does that, a negative light is shown on the general manager and the Rangers general manager is a petty, petty man. Sather plays the recluse to hide his incompetence while collecting his massive paycheque and when people started to blame him of all people for the team's woes, well ... he just can't have that.

So Renney takes the fall. As I said, he was a good coach, who did some good things for the Rangers. He will get another job somewhere else and I for one certainly wish him luck. He just wasn't the right coach for Sather's crop of overpaid miscreants and now the dark master general manager has his big chance to pick that proper person to head the ship. Let's hope he picks well (but I wouldn't bet on it).

Bye Bye Bob

Isn't this a nice turn of events?

The Atlanta Thrashers just canned head coach Bob Hartley. Atlanta started 0-6 and then finally decided to make the change; although they should have fired him last season after lifting Kari Lehtonen from the Rangers series after just one game. So, technically, the Thrashers lost 10 straight games that counted and ditched Hartley, who took them to the playoffs after being a laughingstock for some many years. Don Waddell, the GM who wasted their franchise's future in several bad moves to make a run last year, will temporarily take the helm.

Now that means one of two things for the Rangers - they will either a) face a team in disarray tomorrow night or b) play a bunch of guys who will do whatever it takes to impress the boss and keep their jobs. Sometimes that works (Darryl Sutter in 2004), but more often it fails (see Lou Lamoriello last year, or Doug MacLean any year). And since Atlanta is, well, Atlanta, I will take option b.

Side note on the Rangers for tomorrow: Sam is writing that Nigel Dawes will likely take Hossa's spot tomorrow on the first line. Gotta love the Rangers - like with Isbister last year, they have guys who are first line or press box players. Also, if you click on the link, Sam also gives us the (likely) false hope that Marek Malik will be benched in favour of Tom Pock. One can only pray ...

Let's Go Rangers!