Money Can’t Buy Sather Love

And so Glen Sather has added another superstar to his Rotisserie Rangers, throwing money around as if it were, well, all the money he has thrown at every other problem with notably little success.

Ignoring his team’s obvious needs on defense and in goal -- and perhaps under the delusion that he’s running the 1985 Edmonton Oilers -- Sather acquired a marvelously skilled but moody and one-dimensional forward in Jaromir Jagr. There were more than a few snickers around the NHL when Jagr’s Ranger debut turned into an embarrassing 9-1 loss Saturday at Ottawa.

Even though the Washington Capitals will pay $4.5 million a year of his $11-million salary on a contract that runs through 2007-08 and Jagr will defer $1 million a year, the Rangers’ payroll topped $80 million. That’s in a league determined to get “cost certainty” -- a salary cap or luxury tax -- after the labor agreement expires Sept. 15.

Nor is it certain that Jagr will end the Rangers’ six-season playoff drought and silence the “Fire Sather!” chants that regularly ring through Madison Square Garden. The team was booed at a charity event Sunday, a fate Sather escaped only by not showing up.

“It’s hard to have a lot of guys who need the puck to be successful, and it appears that’s the case there,” Mighty Duck General Manager Bryan Murray said. “It’s Jagr. It’s [Alexei] Kovalev. It’s [Eric] Lindros. It’s [Petr] Nedved. It’s Brian Leetch. With those guys, you need gritty grunt guys who can backcheck for them, win battles on the wall for them.

“You need, to be successful, some guys that are capable of doing real good things with the puck, but you need a core that is also willing to do the necessary things, which are backchecking, winning battles, whatever. You need some lower-paid guys that are happy to be with the team.

“In today’s game, we all want very talented players, but you have to have the right chemistry, the right complementary people with them. It’s more systematic now than probably ever in our league, and so if you play as a group activity and get good goaltending, you have a chance. People can do things by themselves, but they need to get to that point by playing a team-type system.”

As evidence, Murray had only to cite the success of the midrange budget Ducks and New Jersey Devils last season.

King President Tim Leiweke agreed that stars didn’t assure success in the NHL. “You can’t buy the Stanley Cup,” he said.

Leiweke, who last year called the Rangers’ five-year, $45-million signing of Bobby Holik “economic suicide and the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” added that although the Rangers have the right to operate as they see fit, their spending emphasizes claims that the NHL’s economics are out of whack.

“I just scratch my head with what they’re doing and the amount of salaries they have,” Leiweke said. “This just goes to prove we have a lot of haves and have-nots, and I think this just widens the gap.”

Jagr arrived in Washington in July 2001 as the centerpiece in new owner Ted Leonsis’ plan to build a Cup winner. But with coaches trying to win every game by 2-1 and scoring in decline, he never matched the numbers that won him five scoring titles with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“I don’t know what went wrong with Jagr,” Leonsis said via e-mail. “We tried a lot of things -- three coaches in three years -- brought in [fellow Czech Robert] Lang and [Kip] Miller to play with him, but we just didn’t improve as a team. In fact we got worse....

“So we have to improve the team -- and we needed to cut payroll -- and be prepared and be flexible for whatever the new system will be like post-new [labor agreement]. Also, we didn’t increase attendance [the] last two years. Fans weren’t buying what we were selling, so -- time to go to Plan B.”

The Rangers don’t seem to have a plan, just a fat checkbook Sather has depleted without much to show for it.

The Ghost Is Back

Former Duck General Manager Pierre “the Ghost” Gauthier, now director of professional scouting for the Montreal Canadiens, was in Southern California last week for the first time since he sold his Orange County home and moved east in August.

“I’m proud of the legacies we left,” said Gauthier, who was fired in May 2002 and succeeded by Bryan Murray. “We all have our ups and downs, but you have to follow what you believe is the right track.

“My first [executive] experience was in Quebec. I remember, my first year we had 36 points, and when I left five years later, we had 103 points and the youngest team in the league. Then I went to Ottawa, and we built a successful team there. My experience is that there’s a way of building, step by step. I’m happy the Ducks finally got somewhere after the ups and downs of that franchise. I’m proud of last year, even though I didn’t go to the games.”

The Eyes Don’t Have It

When Toronto tough guy Tie Domi said he’d wear a visor in practice after teammates Darcy Tucker and Owen Nolan had suffered eye injuries that required surgery, he became the center of a firestorm.

Was he getting soft -- or getting smart? Was he hiding, or setting a good example for players concerned about their post-hockey lives?

Bombastic Canadian TV commentator Don Cherry was aghast.

“It’s so politically correct,” he said. “You can’t win by saying you shouldn’t put on visors.”

He claimed Domi was “putting on the press” and would never wear a visor in a game. And he might not, having said he first must get used to it.

King Coach Andy Murray last week said he would tell his players to wear visors, which probably would draw fire from the NHL Players’ Assn. on the grounds that such a rule can’t be arbitrarily imposed by a team.

Back to the Future

The Ducks and Minnesota Wild played for the Western Conference title last season but might miss the playoffs this season. Yet, their reversals of fortune don’t surprise Wild Coach Jacques Lemaire, who knows how easily the delicate balance of success can tip the wrong way.

Both teams have been depleted by injuries, and the Wild also had to resolve contract disputes with Pascal Dupuis and Marian Gaborik. Since both teams relied on carefully calibrated team play, the absence of one key player or a slump by another player can trigger a domino effect that devastates the team.

“I think [the Ducks are] probably better than last year up front, but for sure, their goaltender is not as good as he was last year,” Lemaire said of playoff MVP Jean-Sebastien Giguere. “They don’t have a team to, let’s put it this way, to compete with the top teams. For them to win, they’ve got to have all the pieces of the puzzle in the right place. They have some breakdowns, and the pieces don’t fit in the puzzle.

“For us, we’re not that strong yet. The kids, if they improve -- when they improve -- they will help us. Someday they will play very well. We just don’t have the depth now.”

Slap Shots

A Quebec triple-A midget league will conduct random drug tests for steroids on 12 players in each game before its playoffs begin in March.

“I was concerned that our players, about 25%, were consuming some drugs,” league president Martin Roy told CBC Radio in Montreal.

Most players are 15 to 17 years old. A first-time offender would be suspended for six games; a second infraction would draw a one-year ban.

Lou Lamoriello, chief executive of the Devils and the NBA’s New Jersey Nets the last 2 1/2 seasons, will give up his basketball duties when the sale of the Nets is final. The Nets’ new owner, Bruce Ratner, plans to move the team to Brooklyn, but the Devils’ lease binds them to Continental Airlines Arena until 2007. Lamoriello said, however, that the Devils would renew efforts to get a new arena in Newark, a difficult mission at best.

Players thinking of playing in Europe if there’s an NHL lockout next season might think twice: Leiweke said the five European teams owned by King owner Philip Anschutz wouldn’t sign NHL refugees.

“We’re given a very limited number of slots [for imported players]. For us to go sign guys from the NHL, not knowing if they’re there for a week, a month or six months, we can’t give up our slots,” Leiweke said. “I think the majority of teams over there feel the same way.”

The Canadiens canceled plans to practice outdoors Sunday because of the windchill factor that made it feel like minus-22.... Starting Friday, fans can bid for chances to sit in an NHL penalty box, have lunch with a general manager or buy hockey memorabilia through the Hockey Fights Cancer online charity auction. A collaboration between the NHL and the players’ union, the auction raises funds for cancer research and children’s hospitals in North America. Details: www.hockeyfightscancerauction.com.