Quote:
Originally Posted by Kel Varnsen
Dealing with the media isn't coaching. We've all been talking about his time with the Rangers, not tampa all your talk on that is a digression. Drury doesn't play Torts way? No, Drury just became a shell of his former self very quickly and became an ineffective hockey player. Stralman has never seen limited ice time or health scratches? Wrong again sir. Same thing goes for MZA. You being wrong about him and Torts. Torts has just gotten those guys to play Torts style hockey, when he plays them. You think Stralman is the same guy he was in Columbus or Toronto? Then you once again are wrong. When you start getting into talks of specific strategy you start to venture away from change and into development. Torts hockey is playing hard, and accountability. How that manifests itself depends on the way the team is built. Obviously you're not going to play the same style of hockey when your O is weak and you have Hank back there as compared to the days in Tampa with a strong O and at times shaky goalies.
It sounds like you're Ricky Bobby here, "If you're not first, you're last." Well, that's just not true. You can be second, or third, or fourth, hell you can even be fifth! The beginning of this section is wrong in a couple of places (no surprise). First, many from the "Torts has changed" camp don't think he is the guy we hired. Hence the he's changed part of that title there. And with us sitting atop the east (and basically the NHL) right now, it's obvious Torts was good for the process and so the detractors were wrong to not want him here back then. Past is prologue.
You haven't noticed development with McD? That's insane. As for his impact on the other two, it's impossible to know exactly where they would be without Torts. You definitely can't use them against him. Which leads me to Dubi. Again, where were you last year? Dubi was huge for us, and did everything for us. He was our most important forward. He played in all the biggest situations, PP, PK, late in games. No forward played more on the PP or the PK than Dubi. He scored the most goals, assists and pts on the team. Hell, he even took faceoffs while playing the wing (which Torts moved him to). Has he fallen back this year? Of course. Torts impact on his career will be determined over the next few years (assuming both are still here).
Again, past is prologue. Years don't happen in a vacuum. Without the groundwork from previous years this year wouldn't have happened the way it did. I'm not going to continue your lead here of thread hijacking to re-litigate the Renney years, but I will say the players choice for MVP Jaromir Jagr was pretty good. This argument from you seems to be more of a "coaches don't matter" argument than a "torts has changed" argument. Which again, is off topic so I'll leave it at that.
Again, what does this have to do with Torts and the way he's handled the youth? People thought of him as a caricature, and they were wrong to do so. And you seem to contradict yourself anyway by saying torts is doing a good job now and is the right man for the job and then in the next sentence talk about how without this one player it wouldn't matter the team would be doomed. Long and annoying to go though, but most of your points really either were wrong on their face or had nothing to do with anything I said. Torts was and still is a great coach and I'm happy he's here. What we're doing is a credit to him.
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You're right Drury just sucked and Stralman I didn't see play much before so it's hard to say but I imagine he's much more defensive minded now than he had been based on what I'd heard. There was indeed a process that needed to be started here a few years ago. Torts was the right guy back then we can now say in hindsight because he implemented his process, refined it with this team and we see the results. Anyone saying he was a bad hire at the time we hired him is just plain stubbornly refusing to admit error, wrong and/or blind. That's like drafting any player and saying he was a bad player to draft when we drafted him because he wasn't ready to play yet. There's always process, development and change. A player or coach could be CONSIDERED bad at the time we hire/sign them but if they in the end work out overall than clearly as is the case with Torts it was a good move, period. Especially because building a team/system like the one we've built is a multi year process which was implemented successfully. You don't hire Torts back then the process wouldn't be implemented.
"Dubi has had one bad season so we can ignore his good season and extrapolate that Torts definitely had no impact on Dubs which also means he had no impact on developing McD or Hags or Stepan from NCAA to pros". God that's just awful. You can specualte that but to say it definitively is just sour grapes over being wrong I guess.
At the time he was hired there was good reason to think he would be a bad coach and that he was just a caricature but that turned out to be Barry Melrose. Torts turned out to be a passionate guy who madea few mistakes but in the end is, was and will be a great coach and is likely one of the best we'll ever have on the Rangers bench. Shame on anyone refusing to realize that and minimize what he has done here due to simple pride. Similarly shame on anyone who ignores that his initial start here wasn't glorious.
It's the same as with Sather. He's earned praise in the last few years but it's just moronic to ignore the awfulness he showered us with for the first half of his tenure here. ironic both of those guys had similar starts here. Torts had a much smaller sample size though of course and had to build a team around himself Sather just flat out sucked for way too long early on so there are differences. Anyway I think you know what I'm trying to say. Don't ignore the past and forget it altogether just because the present is bright but similarly don't blindly cling to the false notions you had in the past when change and development have clearly erased it.
