Leafs 3 Rangers 2 (OT): Coach Killers For Hire

Whenever Brian Burke gets asked about no trade clauses he relates his belief that they are coach killers and that he hates them. Turns out that NTCs aren't the only coach killers in the organization. The Leafs have struck down Tom Renney after just recently being the straw that broke Michel Therrien's back.

And watching last night's game it was not hard to see why this move was made. The Rangers picked up two too many men penalties when one is generally unacceptable. Aside from that, calling them listless would do a disservice to all of the times that the Leafs lacked list and still played miles better than the Rangers did for most of that game.

They had a graphic of the Rangers' big money guys and the best thing that could be said about them was that Markus Naslund's contract ends after next season. They are composed around a quartet of players exposed for what they truly are: two complementary players (Drury and Gomez) and two washed up players (Naslund and Redden...oh my God he's signed for five more years!). Good thing Sather tricked Lundqvist into signing for five seasons following this developing disaster. I think that now, more than ever, we can dispel the notion of Sather as some genius GM in Edmonton. It looks more and more of a case of having great players fall into his lap than anything that he did.

The Leafs dominated at times throughout the net through nothing more than possessing an actual desire to win. Why did the Rangers lack that desire? Maybe they saw that three of the coaches that went to Europe to start the season had already been fired and could see the writing on the wall. As an aside, one of the highlights was Greg Millen trying to explain how it was such hardship for players to go over to Europe. After making it sound like the Trail of Tears Joe Bowen laughed at him and mentioned that flying first class is not exactly a terrible thing.

So the Leafs will wait patiently to see if the Rangers' change in coaches will make a change in performance. As someone over at Mirtle's noted the new coaches have all lost their first game in charge. Dammit.