Opinion: Let’s stop talking about the New York Rangers tanking

Speculation that the New York Rangers should tank in order to get a top lottery position appears every day. “Tanking” is an offensive word that shouldn’t be in the New York Rangers vocabulary.

Should the word tanking ever be used in the same sentence as New York Rangers?  It has been, a lot. An internet search for “New York Rangers tanking” yielded 219,000 results.     Many of the entries came after Glen Sather and Jeff Gorton sent their February 8th letter to Ranger fans declaring the beginning of the rebuild.

While that letter made it clear that in their opinion the team was not good enough to compete in the playoffs, it never said that the intention was to lose.

Here are some definitions of tanking:

•  Websters Dictionary defines tanking as “to make no effort to win; to lose intentionally.”
• Dictionary.com has it as “to go through the motions of a match but to deliberately lose.”
• The Urban Dictionary says tanking is the act of giving up a match or throwing it away, losing intentionally or not competing.
• Another definition online is “(in sports) deliberately lose or fail to finish (a game).
• In Wikipedia, tanking appears in the entry for “match fixing.”  It says “When a team intentionally loses a game, or does not score as high as it can, to obtain a perceived future competitive advantage, the team is often said to have tanked the game instead of having thrown it.

There are other definitions of tanking, mostly involved with losing or dropping in value, ie. “the stock market tanked today.”   But when it comes to sports, tanking usually implies a conscious effort to lose rather than win.

A history of tanking

Do teams tank?  Of course they do.  That’s why the NHL adopted the draft lottery system after the 2012-13 season.  They revised the rules in 2014-15, making it harder for the worst teams to get the top pick in anticipation of the competition to finish last and draft Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel.

The 1983-84 Pittsburgh Penguins are acknowledged as the experts at tanking in order to get the top draft pick.  That pick was Mario Lemieux and the Penguins knew what they would be getting.  In his final year in juniors, he scored 133 goals and had 149 assists for 282 points in 70 games.

To ensure that they would draft Super Mario, the Penguins traded away Randy Carlyle, their captain and best defenseman and they sent young goalie Roberto Romano to the minors in exchange for a decidedly inferior goalie in Vincent Tremblay. They guaranteed the pick by winning only three out of their last 21 games. If there is any doubt about their intentions, coach Lou Angotti reportedly admitted that he was told to intentionally lose games.

What did they get for their efforts?  They won two Stanley Cups and Lemieux  won six scoring titles and three MVP awards.

Other notorious tanks included the expansion 1992-93 Ottawa Senators who won once in their last 18 games in order to draft Alexander Daigle.  The 1990-91 Quebec Nordiques went 6-23-7 down the stretch to finish last and have the right to draft Eric Lindros.

There are other, more subtle ways to lose. Coaches can start the back up goalie or not challenge a goal or rest players  or hold injured players out of the lineup when they could play. It’s a form of tanking and as teams jockey for lottery or playoff positions, you can see it quite often.

Back to the Rangers

In 2017-18 when management committed to rebuilding they traded five veteran players at the deadline.  In exchange for the five players, the Rangers got three NHL players (Namestnikov, Spooner and Beleskey) along with five prospects (Howden, Lindgren, Rykov, O’Gara, Hajek) and six draft picks. That’s a pretty solid haul for three impending free agents (Nash, Grabner & Holden) and two players under contract (McDonagh and Miller).  That’s not tanking.

That brings us back to the 2018-19 New York Rangers.  The team is overachieving and is contending for a playoff spot.  By New Year’s Day, the Ranger management team will have to make a tough decision, is it still a rebuild or is it a retool?

Going the retooling route means retaining some of these players or trading for assets that can help the team now.

Extending the rebuild means trading Kevin Hayes, Mats Zuccarello and any other established assets that are attractive to a contender.  If they make these deals they won’t be looking to replace the assets lost, but will be acquiring prospects and draft picks.  However, just as it was last year, they won’t be tanking.

Ban the word

If there is one thing we have learned about this Ranger team, the word “tank” is not in their vocabulary.  The two most important people in this organization are David Quinn and Henrik Lundqvist and they have both made it clear that they are here to win every game.

If reality catches up to this team and they fade out of playoff contention, it won’t be for lack of trying.  At that point the Jack Hughes sweepstakes becomes a reality for New York. And at that point we will begin watching the standings, rooting for other lottery bound teams to win and shrugging off frustrating losses.   But I can guarantee that this team will not “intentionally make no effort to win or to lose intentionally.”  Because that definition of tanking is not in the Rangers’ vocabulary.