Brad Richards: Rangers Latest Center Of Attention
July 15th 2011 15:35
I should be excited the New York Rangers acquired center Brad Richards last week.
He is one of the top players and scorers in the NHL and should add a lot to the team.
Should being the operative word.
The position has not exactly worked out over Rangers in recent years or historically as well.
The last experiments Chris Drury and Scott Gomez were pretty much failures in the Big Apple, despite both coming in with impeccable credentials.
They weren't the first front-line centers to come in and flop on Broadway and they probably won't be the last.
The team has had disappointment after disappointment at the center position, going all the way back to Phil Esposito in the 70s.
Perhaps it should be called the Phil Esposito curse, in that they made two miserable trades with the Bruins to acquire the aging star.
Other veterans followed in a past their prime festival, including Marcel Dionne, Guy LaFleur, Wayne Gretzky and Eric Lindros.
Ohhh...the talented Lindros, the ex-Flyers star really hurts in retrospect.
So have others, including Mike Rogers who really only had one good season for the team in the 1980's and Swede Ulf Nilsson who was part of a package signing with Anders Hedberg.
Ironically, the one center who REALLY came through for the Rangers was Mark Messier especially in their 1994 Stanley Cup winning season.
Messier was brash, bold and clutch and the team didn't re-sign him after his heroics until he had a stint with Vancouver.
You got it ... well after his prime.
He is one of the top players and scorers in the NHL and should add a lot to the team.
Should being the operative word.
The position has not exactly worked out over Rangers in recent years or historically as well.
The last experiments Chris Drury and Scott Gomez were pretty much failures in the Big Apple, despite both coming in with impeccable credentials.
They weren't the first front-line centers to come in and flop on Broadway and they probably won't be the last.
The team has had disappointment after disappointment at the center position, going all the way back to Phil Esposito in the 70s.
Perhaps it should be called the Phil Esposito curse, in that they made two miserable trades with the Bruins to acquire the aging star.
Other veterans followed in a past their prime festival, including Marcel Dionne, Guy LaFleur, Wayne Gretzky and Eric Lindros.
Ohhh...the talented Lindros, the ex-Flyers star really hurts in retrospect.
So have others, including Mike Rogers who really only had one good season for the team in the 1980's and Swede Ulf Nilsson who was part of a package signing with Anders Hedberg.
Ironically, the one center who REALLY came through for the Rangers was Mark Messier especially in their 1994 Stanley Cup winning season.
Messier was brash, bold and clutch and the team didn't re-sign him after his heroics until he had a stint with Vancouver.
You got it ... well after his prime.
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