New York Rangers Daily: Neil Smith ‘given a pass;’ Devils coach ‘invested’ in Maple Leafs
Was chatting with Neil Smith on the phone Thursday and the former New York Rangers general manager caught my attention with something he said.
“I did some unpopular things. even before ’94, in an effort to make the team better,” Smith explained. “But I never hid from the media. I never hid from the players. If you wanted an answer, you could just ask me the question, I was always available to everybody.
“So, therefore, I was given a pass on a lot of stuff I did.”
Historically, Smith will always receive a pass or benefit of the doubt for his mistakes — especially those made in the seasons following 1993-94 — because he oversaw the only Rangers championship in the past 85 years.
But his take is intriguing because he was speaking about in the moment not historically, looking back in hindsight. Smith was always available to the media, talking hockey, explaining his decisions, thinking and mindset, or sometimes just shooting the shit.
I never believed Smith did it to curry favor with the press, of which I was a young member at the time. Neil was just being Neil. Outgoing, friendly, open, engaging. He was human, relatable. Not a robot.
He’s right; one of the benefits is that he wasn’t skewered, for example, when the Rangers failed to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1992-93 after winning the Presidents’ Trophy the season before (sound familiar?). Smith was scrutinized, but treated fairly. He wasn’t skewered.
In a broader scope, his comment Thursday made me think about my early days in the media, when reporters routinely chatted up players pregame outside locker rooms and then would sit down with Smith or another executive for dinner before the puck dropped on that game. This is how long-standing relationships and trust were built. Trust was built on both sides.
These days? Not so much. There’s limited access to players — I mean, forget about handing a blow torch to a player as he worked on a stick and chatted with you in the bowels of Madison Square Garden 30 minutes before warmups anymore. Those days were real. But they’re in the past.
I get it, social media plays a role in why that changed. Perhaps the big-time money invested in players changed dynamics, too. But these days, it feels like most every team — certainly the Rangers — want to own the message, control the relationships (such as they are) between players and media. Good luck standing off to the side to have a casual conversation with a player, even on a practice day, without a PR person hovering about or letting you know that’s enough, the player needs to go now.
And the GM? Chris Drury looks so pained and says very little of substance in his very rare media sessions. I guess it could be worse. You could be a Knicks beat reporter and hear from Leon Rose, well, never.
Things are just different now. I’d argue, not better. But let’s leave it as different. And thanks to Neil, a respected friend more than 30 years after we first met, for sending me down this path with a simple open assessment and comment the other day.
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