Ha, right. The current 14 year+ cycle of acquiring band-aids and then blaming the coach when the roster is a disaster is the plan we should continue with. Its worked so well.
This team is nothing like the pre-lockout teams. The teams we have had the last 7 years are nothing like the pre-lockout teams. The only connections between the two at any level of the organization are Dolan and Sather. And I doubt how much control either exert over the day to day running of the team. Sather seemed to have delegated almost all of his duties even before he got cancer.
Regardless, this isn't about Sather. If you fired him and hired a competent GM, scratch that if you fired him and hired the most competent GM in the history of the sport, he would look at your plan and call it idiotic.
No one is ripping apart a team that is in a playoff spot. No one is ripping apart a team that is almost certainly going to make the playoffs. No one is ripping apart a team that is 1/3 into the first season with a new coach and has had the majority of the roster healthy for about a week.
When you put it all together you have probably the most inconceivably ridiculous and unlikely plan in the history of sports management.
To be clear, I am not advocating tanking. I think too many people associate the word rebuild with tanking.
This core has been given a chance for years. As you mentioned, by the trade deadline, the decisions should be made on these guys. To take it a step further, if they're going to get rid of these assets, there should be clear-cut targets for the type of players they hope to get back.
But, like clockwork, the team will hang onto all their pending free agents and likely be buyers at the deadline in a half-assed attempt just to make the playoffs where "anything can happen" but it usually doesn't. Then, you've got a real ****ing disaster on your hands when it comes to where this roster is going in the summer. Worst of all, Sather is the guy that will mold it again.
How are people not sick of this? How do they continually come back to a reasoning of "Oh well another good player or two, or a coaching change is the solution." Its a vicious cycle.
If you want to trade Lundqvist, Callahan, Nash, etc you ARE talking about tanking.
Callahan will not be traded. Nash will not be traded. And most importantly Lundqvist will not be traded. The Rangers can't (and shouldn't try to) tank with him on the roster.
The only "benefit" of the Rangers ripping apart their team is the sense of pure satisfaction that a handful of posters would feel because of Sathers epic failure. Let me let you in on a little secret. Sather is already an epic failure. He was one before the lockout. He was one before you joined the board. There have probably been 10,000 posts on the subject. Fans boo him at games. Fan have organized rallies to have him fired. Even if the Rangers won a cup people would still hate him, and with good reason. So congrats. You won. It was over before it started.