New York Rangers Stanely Cup champion and former captain Mark Messier thinks the team should have one leader as opposed to six alternate captains.
If there is anyone person who can speak of the importance of having a captain on a hockey team that person should be former New York Rangers‘ Mark Messier.
Messier was a guest on the New York Post’s “Up in the Blue Seats†podcast. The inevitable discussion concerning the Rangers and their vacant captaincy was discussed with Messier telling the hosts why he felt it was important to have one leader instead of no captain and six alternates.
“I don’t know the last time a team won a Cup without a captain, I was fortunate enough when I was a captain to have amazing leaders around me, both in Edmonton and in New York. Not only in assistant captains, but players that didn’t have a letter on their jersey who were amazing leaders in their own right, and did an incredible amount of work behind the scenes and got credit for it, by keeping the team galvanized, motivated, in line, singing the same message up and down throughout the team’s leadership from the training staff to the doctors to the management to the coaching staff, it has to be one unified message.
But the big link between all of that is the one leader of the team that everybody can look to in trying times, or under adversity or when things are going great.â€
Head coach Gerard Gallant mentioned that he would name a captain early in training camp, but right before the start of the season, he decided to go with six alternate captains announcing Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Jacob Trouba, Ryan Strome and Barclay Goodrow would all wear the “A” in different games for this season.
Messier has made it known that he wanted to be a part of the Rangers organization before the team named Gallant as their head coach.
ESPN hired Messier to be a game-day analyst along with Chris Chelios beginning this NHL season.