DALLAS -- Amid palm trees and a garish, faux Manhattan skyline behind him, Jim Rutherford spoke passionately last December in Las Vegas about wanting to keep his team intact, about giving the two-time Stanley Cup champions a shot at winning a third.
At the time, Rutherford's club had been struggling. They'd been hemorrhaging odd-man breaks, weren't receiving the secondary scoring they had been banking on. Their franchise goalie was coming off injury. All of the above factors would later come back to ultimately seal his team's fate, but Rutherford didn't want to be the one to break up the band, didn't want to be the Yoko to his Beatles.
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