COMMENTARY : Did the New York Rangers Blunder Again? Only Time Will Tell

History is a double-edged sword for the New York Rangers. It is their H-curse.

History, being what it’s been since 1940, says that until proved otherwise, whatever the Rangers do is wrong. That’s the curse. The natural instinct is to think they’ve done it again.

Then again, history is their blessing. Anything the Rangers do today seems better than what they did in the past.

What they’ve done in the last month is the most sweeping management turnover in the modern history of the franchise. Tuesday they completed a five-man re-organization of the front office, from Neil Smith as general manager, to coach, to assistant general manager, to assistant general manger for player development, to top minor-league coach.

It appears to be a turn in the right direction for an organization that has aimed for mediocrity and institutionalized ineptness.

For decades, the team has plugged each hole with no regard for the whole, and always with an overwhelming need for a name on the marquee. Now the fellow at the top of the table of organization is named Smith. And Roger Neilson hardly turns heads, as Fred Shero or Herb Brooks or Phil Esposito do.

It looks as if they’ve finally chosen to throw out the old by hiring people for their skills rather than for their names. It looks like a bold step.

Then identify it with Jack Diller, who is in charge of the Rangers and the Knickerbockers for Paramomount Communications Inc. Where history says the organization was always as skittish as a cat sliding on a marble floor, the theme of the change is stability.

There appears to be direction where there was none.

But then again, we shouldn’t be fooled by any name change. That’s Gulf & Western inside the new corporate cloak, just as Allegheny became US Air and Constantinople became Istanbul. Still, the second-guess is the first consideration: Until and unless it works, how can it be a good direction?

At least there is talk of stability and some kind of plan. Remember that the New York Mets first became good when Gil Hodges’ personality took over the operation and stability followed. There was chaos the second time around until Frank Cashen came in with his own crew and a group concept. The New York Yankees recovered when Gabe Paul was in charge, and since they have had only George Steinbrenner’s chaos.

The New York Giants of the National Football League didn’t get better until George Young took charge. The Knicks didn’t return to competitiveness until Al Bianchi brought his sense of stability. The Jets have no general manager.

The Knicks are the closest blood to the Rangers, because Diller is in charge of both operations. He hired Bianchi. The counter-irritants of Esposito and Michel Bergeron with the Rangers were in place when Diller returned to Madison Square Garden.

Diller does not claim to be a hockey maven. That is important to understand, especially for him. He can go into the public relations office and identify faces in the team photos of the ‘40s, but when he worked for the Garden from 1969-74 he was a corporate lawyer. In the interval before he returned in 1987, he worked for cable television.

His responsibility is to hire good people and enable them to do their jobs. “There is no chance that I will make talent decisions,” Diller said. “The day I tell Neil Smith that so-and-so is a hell of a left wing or that he plays a great positional game, we’re all in trouble. That means only one thing: The guy who should be making the judgments has lost your confidence.

“I’d better make sure the general manager of the Knicks knows the things a general manager should do. The same thing goes in hockey.”

Bianchi, having directed the Knicks back to the land of the living, was free to make his own bold gesture by filling the Rick Pitino vacancy with Stu Jackson.

When it was recognized that Esposito was not taking the Rangers where Diller wanted them to go, Diller looked at the most successful organizations and, he said, decided stability was the common factor. Smith said that while he was being interviewed, he was actually interviewing Diller.

“The perception I had was that the Rangers started with this in their plans for this year and God knows about next year,” Smith said.

“We don’t want to patch this up to get five more points (in the standings) and have to do it again next year,” Diller said. He knows how to give the right answers.

The look is of stability and emphasis on player development, which has been lacking. The ego clashes between Bergeron and Esposito were there from the outset.

The new five are presented as a team: a curly permed coach in a plaid suit, a baby-faced assistant general manager in a double-breasted, another assistant general manager in a black blazer with gray trousers and the top minor-league coach with craggy face and red beard. Diller sees them all in the same stripe. “They can work together,” Diller said. “That’s most important, not to go out and point in four different directions.”

They appear to be bright-eyed and bright-minded. Three of them are college graduates -- one with a graduate degree -- which is rare in hockey operations. The coach has a reputation for innovation. In the National Hockey League, that means he introduced videotape analysis 40 years after it was commonplace in football and basketball.

For a time, Smith considered former Islanders coach Terry Simpson as his coach. The big team hiring a discard from the little team would have been a potential image disaster for the Rangers. And Smith said he recalled Simpson had trouble adjusting to Long Island pressures.

The Rangers have their own pressures. Rounding out that team can’t come immediately. Diller has to be willing to take the lashes and keep the direction, as Cashen did and Gulf & Western never could. “Nobody likes taking knocks,” Diller said, “but we certainly intend to be able to take them and still go ahead.”

It all sounds right. But then, they are the Rangers. There’s no way to take them at their word. Check back in April.