Arber Xhekaj: the guy who might just save Jeff Gorton’s job

May 3, 2021: Tom Wilson hits everything that moves on the rink at Madison Square Garden and ends up injuring Artemi Panarin, the Rangers’ best player. Panarin won’t play another game all season.

May 4, 2021: the Rangers organization issues a press release calling for the head of George Parros, who gave Tom Wilson a slap on the wrist(a.k.a. a fine).

“We consider this a dereliction of duty on the part of NHL Player Safety Officer George Parros and believe he is unfit to continue in his current position.” – New York Rangers

May 5, 2021: Six fights break out in the first five minutes of another Capitals vs. Rangers game, even though the NHL had asked both teams to keep quiet…

Above all, Jeff Gorton and John Davidson, respectively GM and president of the Rangers, are fired a few hours before this UFC-style match.

The versions differ depending on who you talk to, but basically, it’s understood that Rangers CEO James Dolan didn’t like to see his team being shuffled around like that on his home rink. Jeff Gorton and John Davidson had been too soft in his eyes, not only in their reaction, but also in their approach to rebuilding the Rangers’ line-up.

James Dolan is still CEO of Madison Square Garden Sports and Madison Square Garden Entertainment… while Jeff Gorton is now VP hockey for the Montreal Canadiens. It was Gary Bettman who suggested Gorton to Geoff Molson…

Oh yes, to finish off this appetizer, you should know that Jeff Gorton had signed (with Glen Sather) a letter telling Rangers fans that they were going to have to be patient as the club was going to go through a rebuild on February 8, 2018. He lost his job three years later because the rebuild was apparently taking too long in James Dolan’s eyes and wasn’t being piloted in a way that would get the Rangers fit to play physical NHL hockey (especially in the playoffs). At least, that’s what credible people in New York have repeatedly reported…

Apart from the post-COVID qualifying round, the Rangers didn’t play in the playoffs during those three years of rebuilding…

And they drafted Vitali Kravtsov, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafrenière and Braden Schneider with their first-round picks.

Jeff Gorton in Montreal
There are clear parallels to be drawn between the Rangers’ rebuild and that of the Canadiens (currently).

Jeff Gorton was hired as VP hockey on November 28, 2021. That was three years ago…

He told fans they’d have to be patient as the club rebuilt.

He hasn’t been to the playoffs since, and he drafted a challenged guy like David Reinbacher fifth overall in 2023.

See me coming?

Jeff Gorton currently finds himself in the same place he was in 2021 in New York: his club is rebuilding and many would like to see him take it to the next level. However, success is slow in coming and his club is getting pushed around quite a bit on the ice.

In New York, it was Panarin and Buchnevich; in Montreal, it’s Patrik Laine, David Reinbacher, Kirby Dach, Lane Hutson and so on.

I’m not a proponent of violence in hockey. I’ve said it many times.

That said, the NHL is a violent league… increasingly violent… and Jeff Gorton’s job isn’t to convince the decision-makers to make it less violent; it’s rather to build a team capable of achieving success within the parameters of the league in which his club plays. That’s it.

If I were Jeff Gorton, I’d make sure I had players with the wolf pack mentality in my line-up… and I’d ask Martin St-Louis to be a little less hard on Arber Xhekaj.

Because in the end, it may be the Arber Xhekajs, Michael Pezzettas and other violent gentlemen of his club who will prevent him from losing his job as he did in Manhattan.

When you don’t have tough guys in your line-up and/or the guys don’t stand up on the ice, it opens the door to outbursts. Outbursts that send your best players or prospects to the infirmary.

And it slows down your rebuilding, which, let’s face it, needs to pick up speed soon. Fans’ patience has its limits.

Yes, ultimately, it’s up to the referees and the security department to put their pants on and stop the violence we see on NHL rinks. But they don’t…

At this point, I have no choice but to agree with Georges Laraque: the goons and the code are still necessary. Jeff, Kent and Martin must be aware of this, even if Geoff Molson wasn’t forged in the same mould as James Dolan…

Of course, one day, the NHL is going to have to find a way to protect its star players from guys like Arber Xhekaj… without that solution being to have more guys like Xhekaj on every team. Except, until then, things are the way they are, and Canadiens executives have to adapt.

Jeff Gorton must avoid making the same mistakes he made in New York, because only fools repeat the same mistakes, hoping for a different result…