Did Larry Brooks make up a story just to stick it to Glen Sather?
Greg over at Metro Hockey has a fantastic story about some investigative reporting done by Adrian Szkolar, a Ranger fan and student at Stony Brook University.
Last week Larry Brooks ran this story about the Rangers failure to offer Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik a contract when he was a free agent. You can click the link for the full Brooks' article, here is an excerpt:
Snubbed apparently because the GM was too busy angling to sign the not-even one-and-done Dimitri Kalinin after previously investing $11.5M annually in free agent defensemen Wade Redden and Michal Rozsival, Orpik re-upped with Pittsburgh for six years at an annual $3.75M cap hit.
As usual, tough words from Brooks on Sather. Larry has been on Glen's case for a long time, that's no secret to anyone who follows the Rangers on a daily basis. But with the evidence presented, it looks like Larry may have made this one up.
When Orpik re-upped with Pittsburgh, it was reported that Orpik turned down more money from the Rangers to stay with PIttsburgh, this was reported by Rossi.
The offers Orpik, 27, could have accepted from two other teams -- one of which was the Atlantic Division rival New York Rangers - would have paid him a higher annual salary.
So, Adrian went digging, first going to Brooks to ask him to clarify the situation, then to Rossi, who had reported directly from Orpik that the Rangers had an offer on the table for him.
Brooks naturally did not like being questioned, and the email exchange between him and Adrian is pretty interesting, because even though Adrian is presenting Brooks with pretty overwhelming evidence, Larry refuses to budge on the story he wrote.
You can read the whole story here, including the various emails between Adrian, Brooks, and Rossi.
I think the main question that sticks out for me is: Hasn't Glen Sather made enough mistakes that the media doesn't need to make any up?
Full props to Greg and Adrian at Metro Hockey, they did a great job with this.
