In January, we examined the plight of the 2002-03 New York Rangers. Here's an excerpt:

The Rangers are beyond bad. Imagine a triple-bill concert featuring Roxette, Yoko Ono and The Captain & Tennille. Imagine a Tom Green retrospective at the local cinema. Imagine being Whitney Houston's publicist. Imagine Dr. Phil coming to live with you for a few years. The Rangers make all those things seem like discovering Bill Gates libeled you in print.

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In retrospect, one thing is clear: We were being too generous.

First, a quick recap: Since the season began, Rangers GM Glen Sather has spent money like an estranged wife with incriminating photos of her husband. He has betrayed with breathtaking abandon his Edmonton-era mantra of fiscal responsibility, and done so wearing the smirk that was justified when Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier were crushing the competition, but now seems ridiculously misplaced.

And, whether or not the franchise makes a highly improbable, last-breath run into the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, he is the architect of the NHL's biggest atrocity since Alexandre Daigle's rookie contract.

In that January article, we argued Sather's then-$70-million experiment had blown up real good, and deserved dismantling in favor of a youth-fueled, Vancouver Canucks-like rebuild. Instead, Sather went out and acquired Boris Mironov, Alexei Kovalev, two-thirds of mainland China -- like you'd be shocked --and Anson Carter. In total, he signed off on cosmetic surgery ­pricetag: $10-million for a franchise in desperate need of a heart transplant.

Now, Rangers apologists will point to Sather's move behind the bench, and the team's subsequent 10-6-3-2 record under him, as proof positive the course has been righted.

Sure it has. And Eric Lindros is the same player he was two years ago.

Slice it any way you like, folks, but there's nothing like the bottom line to illustrate things, and here it is: A payroll nuzzling close to $80-million -- equal to the combined salaries of the Ottawa Senators, Atlanta Thrashers and Nashville Predators -- will be lucky to break the .500 mark this season.

A team built to be the Harlem Globetrotters has come up playing like the Washington Generals. That's all you need to know.

Undoubtedly though, when the Rangers are making plans for the draft lottery, there will be debate over whether or not Sather should get another shot. Try convincing poor Dean Lombardi, the former Sharks GM who still needs smelling salts to recover from a whack job reportedly ordered because he failed to cut enough payroll from another bunch of underachievers.

Let's go over that again: Sather adds payroll, and goes from GM to coach-GM. Lombardi cuts payroll, and goes from employed to the bread lines. Is this Bizarro World? If Sather signs Sergei Fedorov and trades for Jaromir Jagr and Patrick Roy this offseason, will he be bumped up to chairman of Madison Square Garden? If he were forced to grow an evil goatee, a la Captain Kirk, would we better understand his actions?

If you're still unconvinced of the menace Sather's absurd spending spree poses to the financial viability of the league, have a gander at his comments regarding the Kovalev deal, a trade almost universally considered to be a world-class salary dump to keep the red-ink-laden Penguins solvent:

"I don't think it's a salary dump at all," Sather said at the time, his nose strangely the same size at the end of the sentence as it was at the beginning. "It was difficult parting with the guys we did."

The guys Sather parted with? Ahem: Try Rico Fata, Joel Bouchard, Richard Lintner and Mikael Samuelsson. For Alexei Kovalev. By "difficult'" Sather must've meant "difficult to keep from doubling over with laughter as the paperwork was finalized."

But that's how it is with Glen Sather. He knows the right words to say, and doesn't care if he truly means it. When he presided over the Oilers, you couldn't get a word in edgewise over his "woe-is-me-us-small-market-teams-aren't-ever-going-to-survive-if-these-big-nasty-cash-cow-clubs-keep-driving-up-player-salaries" tap-dance. But when the going gets tough -- and with no playoff appearances from the Rangers in the last five seasons, tough it has gotten -- ­his empty words are stomped into the mud by another fat check. (Speaking of which, that could be the Penguins' motto for next season: "No fat checks." You're welcome, Mario.)

In a sense, it'd be nice to see the Rangers kept together next season, if only to showcase them around the league as a cautionary tale. For these Rangers, more than any other team in the NHL's history, prove a valuable lesson: Hockey is not a sport that individuals win. Hockey doesn't yield LeBron James-type saviors. The George Steinbrenner philosophy of blindly slapping talent on top of talent does not hold water around these parts. No, hockey is about sacrifice, determination and teamwork. Guess what three things the Rangers lack?

To sum things up, we turn to the wisdom of Pavel Bure, another Blueshirt who'll be red-faced when he's on the links in a few weeks:

"We would have liked two points," Bure told the Toronto Sun's Mike Ulmer after a 3-2 overtime loss to Ottawa March 13. "But one is better than nothing."

That's all you need to know about Glen Sather and the New York Rangers: They're looking out for No. 1, and No. 1 only.

Ironic, then, that they've turned out to be a bunch of nothings.

E-mail Adam Proteau at aproteau@thehockeynews.com.

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