When I was 12 years old, I remember the NY Rangers trading for Mark Messier in the hopes that a team could be built around him to contend for the Stanley Cup. The team had some decent talent back then in the likes of Bernie Nicholls, Mike Gartner, and a young defenseman named Brian Leetch.
As soon as Mark hit the Rangers, he took control of that team. Neil Smith might have been the GM and Roger Neilson and Mike Keenan might have coached the teams, but the truth was that Messier ran that team in the early 1990s. He commanded respect in the locker room and he led by example on the ice, racking up 107 points in his first season in NY. Later on in 1994, Messier showed how his leadership tied the whole team together.
If you have ever seen Messier's eyes when he was taking a face-off, you know what determination he had on the ice.
The Rangers organization has already put him in a position to ascend to the GM spot, and now is the time to make that change and let him use that same determination he had in 1994 to build the franchi ...
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Article written by Adam from Brooklyn