If I were going to venture a guess, and this only a guess, I'd theorize that the Rangers thought he had already reached his peak and felt there was only way for his foot speed and production to go. Factoring in a NMC, they probably swallowed hard and assumed that if they were going to make a move, it was either now or never.
The truth is that the Girardi and Staal contracts were disastrous and have impacted A LOT of decisions over the last few years.
They had him on the market for a while, more than a year. NMC played a huge part, as did the skating.. you are absolutely right about that...
But contrary to what's not disclosed, Step played through a lot of injuries.. the guy was and is a warrior... the mileage was very high on a late 20 year old to be for the Rangers liking.
That's a problem for the snowflake generation, but old school guys like Messier would never give a **** about any of that
It's a generational/income bracket thing. The game is so expensive that in some areas, only rich kids can play... especially in the composite era. Add to that the millennial habits (I'm one by age bracket, but not one by spirit) you get a lot of soft nice kids that didn't face adversity until their early 20s.
Rangers had a guy like that, awesome dude, Class A guy. But soft as diarrhea.. even the nicest guys on the team would rag on him cause they'd get a reaction out of him.
This is one of the reasons why some guys in the locker room respected Tanner so much, last year's team had a lot of softies (as does this year's)... some of the more character guys liked seeing Tanner in the line up over a mental midget, and why a guy like Smith made an impact.
Some of those recent college grads are some of the biggest yuppies you'll ever come across.
Same with Puemps.
