Sather is building this roster the wrong way

[Slamm Goodbody]

Hockey is all about continuity and chemistry on your roster. The most successful teams are the ones that have a core group of experienced players with complimentary (and cheap) role players that can be successful in an established system. Detroit, Pittsburgh, and the other teams on the top of the league make smart signings coupled with effective cap management.

Sather has thrown that all to the wind, AGAIN, this offseason. He's made some good additions, at least on paper, but the question as to how the team will function with such a huge turnover is a very serious one. For every good move the guy makes, he makes a crappy one that makes us worse. Look at the departures so far this year:

Naslund - never really fit but retired rather than deal with an offseason of being traded.
Gomez - had a lot of ability but a bad year and a huge deal doomed his time here.
Antropov - performed well for us when we brought him here but his asking price just couldn't be met.
Morris* - I noted this one because while I don't think he's officially signed elsewhere yet, I haven't heard anything about the Rangers bringing him back. He was OK in his limited duty last year but I won't shed any tears.
Sjostrom - great on the PK unit (our biggest strength last year next to goaltending), great energy guy.
Mara - solid vet presence, could have been had for a 1 year deal, always does the little things and a strong leader for the squad.
Orr - enforcer could have been had for less money but more years than Brashear.

These losses are on top of trades we made at the deadline last year that lost us some homegrown, if limited talent, in Dawes and Prucha. I'm not saying all of the above departures are bad moves, but looked at in the context of their contracts, some are certainly questionable.

Now they're talking about letting Zherdev walk after arbitration, after we gave up a cheap and effective defenseman that could take a big shot from the point on the power play in Tyutin to acquire him a year ago. I'm by NO MEANS a big Zherdev fan, but if he goes, you have to blame Sather for another bonehead play.

Rambling aside, the point is this - Sather continues to mismanage this team the same way he did in the pre-salary cap era. He plays the roster like a fantasy team, bringing in the names with statistics that look great on paper in exchange for gritty guys with small salaries that get the job done. The Rangers didn't need a complete makeover, what they needed was to retain the guys they had, trade one or two of the big contracts, and sign a sniper with the space. He accomplished this out of the gate with the Gomez trade and the Gabs signing, but decided that wasn't enough - he needed to tinker more and get his fingerprints all over it by acquiring middling veterans with low ceiling talent and bigger contracts.

Just count our blessings we still have the King in net because he'll keep whatever crop of mismatched talent ends up being the 2009-2010 New York Rangers in the game.