“What better location to try to perform than Madison Square Garden each night,” he said. “That’s a dream come true.”
“The phone will probably get darted in a lake,” he said,
air force, joking.
GM Glen Sather deserves honor for landing the best player in free agency,
shox air, at all times his young, developing team is ready for it. He likewise gets points for the access he did it. He passed on going to the Newport offices in Mississauga, Ont., with a convoy of folk to try and triumph over the Richards camp.
But the laid-back approach went.
“I equitable didn’t want it to rotate into some variety of scene,” Sather said. “I just didn’t want to obtain contained in that kind of circus preparation … We made our presentation and we were straight up.”
Free agency namely over as Richards, merely if he thought this process was difficult, await until he sees what’s afterward. He’s immediately been identified for the variable that takes the Rangers from an early-round exit to a competition team.
Instead, he made a call phone by 12:01 afternoon ET ashore Friday where he made his pitch and premier offer. Then he watched ashore television as additional teams paraded through the Newport bureau. It couldn’t have been simple waiting and knowing convincing pros like Kings GM Dean Lombardi and Lightning GM Steve Yzerman were production a pitch.
Now, it’s on him to make it occur.
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On paper, it’s perfect. Richards fills multiple needs. He knows and likes the adviser. He says he feels great and entirely revived from his concussion and has been exercising for six weeks. New York needed an elite heart, and he was the only 1 accessible.
The free agency rodeo is over for Richards but the spotlight doesn’t vanish for his appoint is on a contract. He chose New York, and he’d better be prepared for what that method.
When the Rangers were excluded from the playoffs, coach John Tortorella sat down and identified a few needs to get over the hump. An elite center. Someone to escape the power melodrama. A mentor for the Rangers' youth amplifying along.
He tin take the Rangers from agreeable to great. He residences real absences, which wasn’t necessarily the circumstance in Tampa Bay alternatively Los Angeles. It’s the perfect fit -- assuming he’s capable to withstand the responsibility. He’s playing in a market unlike anyone other he’s played in his profession with a pressure he’s not faced.
This isn’t Dallas or Tampa. This is New York, and the expectancy has now chance a Stanley Cup.
“It’s going to be a dare for sure. It’s going to be something different, I haven’t seasoned it,” he said of the shake to a market like New York. “You want to be a excellent player, that’s something you should relish.”
For a fellow like Brad Richards, who doesn't have the ego of many star athletes,
shoe warehouse, the attention and spotlight that came with creature the No. 1 target in free agency wasn’t someone he necessarily hugged. With his handle done with the New York Rangers -- a nine-year, $60 million contract -- he’s free to do something he probably ambitioned to do a week antecedent.
Richards addresses all 3, and that’s why the Rangers and Richards were the ideal fit likened to the other finalists like the Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings, Calgary Flames and Tampa Bay Lightning.