Feasted on during a famine
Although it hurts to see Doug Weight, Tony Amonte, etc playing well, Ranger fans can forgive those trades. It brought New York the Stanley Cup. What's troubling is what has transpired in the years after the Cup. Let's start with the lockout.

Lockout = youth
The 1994 lockout established a new economic landscape in the NHL. By making players ineligible for unrestricted free agency until they reach 31, it (seemingly) forced teams to draft wisely and develop from within the organization. The thinking should have been: "We draft the guy at 18, he's ours until he's 31." And a player who is 31 has a lot of mileage on him.

Someone forgot to tell the Rangers and Neil Smith this. Look at some of the talent that has escaped over the years. Mattias Norstrom, Alexei Kovalev, Niklas Sundstrom, Dan Cloutier, Corey Hirsch, Marc Savard, etc. It's true that not all of these guys mentioned are elite players, but they are players the Rangers could have been developing over the years as their core.

Colorado and New Jersey are examples of great drafting and player development. The home grown talent combined with key veterans have made them a force every year. The Rangers have gone from a team that used to trade its youth to a team that refuses to play its youth.

It gets worse
So the Rangers have no young core. What now? The Rangers have to sign free agents over 31 years old to plug in the holes. Let's examine some of those acquisitions. Valeri Kamensky, Vladimir Malakov, Sylvain Lefebvre, Stephane Quintal, Mike Keane, Pat LaFontaine, Brian Skrudland. OK, let's stop right there.

A positive step?
Before his firing, Neil Smith managed to maneuver in the draft to pluck Pavel Brendl and Jamie Lundmark. The jury is still out on these guys, but a feeling of disappointment has leaked out at times and you wonder if these guys will get a legitimate shot.

So far, Manny Malhotra hasn't been given a fair shake and it's about time for him to be given a chance to show what he's got. You know it had to kill Smith when John Muckler refused to play Malhotra. This is Smith's guy, the guy he held onto with Pavel Bure hanging in the balance. So Smith has no Bure and the guy he wouldn't deal isn't playing. Pass the Mylanta.

A needed change
Exit Smith, enter Glen Sather. The architect of the Edmonton Oiler dynasty. The fiscal acrobat in the post-dynasty era. Sather usually got good young talent for the star players he could no longer afford and managed to put a competitive playoff team on the ice.

What would Sather do now that money was plentiful? Not much. We're talking about a Rangers team with many holes to fill. Sather's dream gig would have been to have the Oiler team with the Ranger money.

A rough go of it
It's been a brutal year for Sather. The team has underachieved, leaving head coach Ron Low at times speechless, and other times left him wondering if you could bench an entire team. Many of the veterans have played terrible hockey. Not only did Mike Richter suffer a devastating knee injury, he got hurt when it seemed Sather had a deal in the works with St. Louis.

Then Theo Fleury's substance abuse problem came out, further strangling a lifeless team. Fleury's sad situation also killed the possibility of him being dealt. Fleury was in the deal that would have brought Nikolai Khabibulin and Keith Tkachuk to the Rangers.

Insult to injury
Unfortunately for Sather, the few moves he did make didn't do much for the team. Mark Messier, with all due respect, has looked like a 40 year old hockey player. Even the Captain's infamous stare couldn't stir up any signs of life. Sandy McCarthy has been a disappointment.

Sather did a nice job getting rid of Stephane (I love Montreal) Quintal, but Michal Grosek is deeply entrenched in the Ranger doghouse. Mix in the John MacLean standoff/banishment and it has not been an auspicious debut.

A time to reassess
Sather inherited quite a mess. A GM needs time to sort out a mess. Just ask Michael Jordan. His timetable is a little hazy given the circumstances.

He got the Rangers on the decline and they plummeted even further this year. While he needs time to right the ship, he's also under the gun to make it a speedy process.

Starting anew
The choice is obvious: Sather has to start fresh. Guys like Malhotra, Jan Hlavac, Mike Mottau, Mike York, Jeff Ulmer, Peter Smrek, Kim Johnsson and Tomas Kloucek have to be the beginning of a young core. Sather also needs to find out if any of the young goalies have what it takes to play in the NHL.

It's time for change. Big time change.