Herb Brooks would have been a bad choice to coach the New York Rangers. Brooks' heart wasn't in it, and at best he was going to be a short-term answer for a long-term question. He is an offensive coach, for a team that desperately needs guidance playing defense. He is a strong-headed guy who would have clashed with hands-on president/GM Glen Sather, no matter how similar their philosophies on how the game should be played.

        He probably would have quit before he was fired.

        Sather made a big mistake by crossing Ken Hitchcock off his list weeks ago, and letting Hitchcock land in Philadelphia, where an underachieving team will now achieve, no doubt.

        Hitchcock is a negative, opinionated guy. He's a tough coach for whom to play, and his strict systems can stifle star players' creativity. But he wins, and the Rangers right now need to start thinking about wins, about getting to the playoffs, instead of how they entertain the 18,200 restless folks who still line up to buy overpriced tickets at the World's Most Overrated Arena.

        Sather was somehow talked out of hiring Hitchcock. He contacted Hitchcock before the season ended, before he fired Ron Low. He interviewed Hitchcock before all other candidates, and took him on a lengthy tour of the team's new Greenburgh practice facility. He was interested in Hitchcock. Then he wasn't.

        So, apparently, Wayne Gretzky's Canadian Olympic brass talked to Sather about Hitchcock's involvement as an assistant coach in the Salt Lake City games (Oh, so he had no bearing on Canada's gold medal?).

        And apparently, Sather was swayed by the cries against hiring Hitchcock by Eric Lindros and by the worry that Hitchcock wouldn't be able to keep Pavel Bure happy and productive. This is Glen Sather, who loudly said “I don't care what the players think” on Breakup Day, and who reportedly told Lindros to shut up and worry about playing when Lindros railed against Hitchcock in his exit meeting last month. This is Glen Sather, who supposedly never bows to pressure from anybody?

        So Hitchcock's negative. Remember Colin Campbell? He got fired for being negative, less than a year after taking the injury-depleted Rangers to the 1997 Eastern Conference final. He got fired after giving MSG seven playoff series in three seasons in a no-win situation upon taking over a Cup champ in post-Mike Keenan chaos. But he was too negative.

        John Muckler, who replaced him, was positive. Upbeat all the time. Never won a thing. Low was positive, one of the great hockey people on the planet, a nice-guy coach. Never won a thing.

        Guess what else? Low's teams trapped. Oh, they didn't do it very effectively, or all the time, but they trapped. Nobody complained that they were boring, just that they lost.

        Negative Mr. Hitchcock would have trapped, or used some such system, but Hitchcock would have also had his players understand what must and must not happen in the defensive zone, which has been these Rangers' undoing since 1997. Let's face it, talent wise, the Rangers should be as good as the two teams in the Eastern finals today. The Rangers lack depth, and Sather has built a defense out of offensive defensemen only, but Toronto and Carolina don't have the front-line type of players the Rangers have.

        Hitchcock was the perfect guy, a tail-kicker who knows how to keep pucks out of his own net and, therefore, win. He's in Philadelphia.

        Bring on Ted Nolan.

        —-

        If you like hockey, or if you want to learn to like it, don't leave your chair for a moment of Colorado-Detroit. Feel free to do something else during Toronto-Carolina.

        —-

        By the way, if Mats Sundin comes back, maybe Toronto can win a game in the finals against the Avalanche-Red Wings winner. If not, it will be a sweep over either the Leafs or the Hurricanes.

        —-

        Through two rounds, home teams were 41-31 in the playoffs.

        —-

        Isn't it getting a bit stale, this notion that Toronto has shown so much heart and guts and emotion and fortitude in these playoffs. The Leafs have done well, minus Sundin and some other players whose worth is actually negligible, but they have done so in such a distasteful manner, and in an Eastern Conference that is just terribly weak.

        —-

        It seems that most of those tossing verbal roses at the Leafs, by the way, are Canadian-born TV folks at ESPN and other outlets, or newspaper/magazine reporters in Canada. It seems, too, that a high percentage of ex-players, media types and even those in the league offices are wearing Maple Leafs jerseys under their shirts and ties, doesn't it?

        —-

        You have to love it, too, when Gary Roberts is hyped as a potential Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP. Roberts should still be serving his suspension for trying to maim the Islanders' Kenny Johsson in the first round.

        —-

        In an otherwise-terribly officiated game (you could say that almost any night, couldn't you?) I loved it when referee Kerry Fraser called Colorado's Brad Larsen for diving. Larsen had fooled Fraser earlier in the playoffs. The guy's a total fraud, and the new leader in the diving department. As an old-schooler, I find it revolting.

        —-

        I'd bet that Mike Richter's Rangers career will end in early July and that Sather will make enough negative noise about Brian Leetch next season to get Leetch to agree to a trade to a contender. Which, of course, makes no sense. How do you get rid of your best defenseman, even if he did struggle after the Olympics, and consider that an improvement?

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