A memorable line from the movie Ben Hur is
“We keep you alive to serve this ship,
Row well, and live”
Three story lines remind us of that line.
This week, two individuals were jettisoned by their respective teams.
In New York, the Rangers bought out two years of Kevin Shattenkirk‘s contract and waved goodbye.
Two less than mediocre seasons on Broadway and the New York native’s show was cancelled. His tenure on the Rangers’ roster was marked by injury in the first year of the four-year contract and last season was lost effort.
“Today’s decision was a very difficult one,” Rangers president John Davidson said on Thursday. “Kevin is a great person and teammate and he was extremely proud to be a New York Ranger. We wish him and his family all the best going forward.”
Nice guy or not, $6.65 million for a number seven defenseman is not a balanced asset. He had seven goals in New York over two seasons.
Jacob and Trouba, Tony DeAngelo and Adam Fox on the Rangers’ blueline meant Shattenkirk was gone. The cap hit this season is just over $1 million but the 2020-21 season will be over $6 million to cover the signing bonuses.
In Minnesota, the Wild fired general manager Paul Fenton after one season in the role.
You might think that was a short tenure, and it is, but his time on the job had the Wild rowing in circles and they missed the playoffs. They didn’t look good doing it either.
“There was no final straw,” Wild owner Craig Leipold said. “There really wasn’t. This was just something I had been thinking about and thinking about and then began to pull the onion back a little bit within our organization and hockey ops. There was absolutely no main or big issue. It was just a lot of smaller issues and we just felt it was time to move.
“We’re really not going to know for three years [how the players will pan out] because of the trades that occurred. They’re Paul’s responsibility and I will say we’ve got some young, talented players that we picked up on some of these trades. I’m excited about where they can go, and three years from now, we may look back and probably say these were the best moves made, hard to tell. But this move was not because of the trades.
“There was a strategic direction we were going in. He understood it. He was executing it.”
Fenton traded away assets and got little in return .
“He was an assistant general manager really doing scouting. That was his role,” Leipold said of Fenton. “And he was tremendous at that. It was the other portion of being a general manager, the organizational part, the strategic part, the management of people, the hiring and motivating of the departments. When I talk about not being a good fit, that’s what I’m referring to.”Â
Fenton essentially swapped s Charlie Coyle, Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund for Ryan Donato, Victor Rask and Kevin Fiala.
The third topic is the rumor mill surrounding Jason Zukcker of the Wild.
This past season he picked up 21 goals and 42 points on the season. That was a big drop from his 33 goals and 64 points in the 2017-18 campaign.
“Names get floated out there all the time, and I’m glad the trades didn’t happen,” Zucker said. “It’s always something. If it happens once, it’s in the back of your mind for a bit; if it happens twice, it’s really in the back of your mind, and it was definitely something at the forefront of my life for the last while. But again, it’s hard for me to fault [Fenton] if he thought that’s what’s best for the organization.
“Whether you agree or disagree with it, he felt those were moves that would make the team better, and ultimately Craig disagreed and didn’t like what was happening and decided to go in another direction.”
That drop off in production spurred the rumors but thus fay, Zucker has survived the one-year test.
Chances are that Zucker will not get another year like 2018-19; he may find himself swimming to shore.
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