All right, these NHL bosses are serious this time, right?

They're not going to produce a pitiful luxury-tax plan at the last minute as a temporary cure like Bud's baseball league? There will be no futile fiddling with the free-agency rules in the hope of a 10-year, trickle-down economic effect?

2002-03 BY THE NUMBERS

Record: 32-36-10-4 78 pts. (19th overall, 9th East, 4th Atlantic); Home: 17-18-4-2; Road: 15-18-6-2 Goals for/Avg.: 210/2.6 (18th overall) Goals against/Avg.: 231/2.81 (T21st overall) Differential: Minus-21 (19th overall) Power play: 16.2 percent (55-339, 15th overall) Penalty kill: 81.2 percent (315-388, 29th overall) 20-goal scorers: Petr Nedved (27), Anson Carter (26)* 50-point scorers: Carter (60)*, Nedved (58), Eric Lindros (53) * - Carter registered 1-4-5 in 11 games with the Rangers.

This is it, eh? One more season of spending to varying degrees of success and failure from Wall Street to Broad Street, and then all the bulls come crashing down in the mad scramble for a hard salary cap.

Only then will New York Rangers general manager Glen Sather be ready for one more winning encore. Or will he?

Sather proved in Edmonton that he could lead financially restricted teams to the playoffs, even though they were never good enough to do much there. But since he's been in New York the last two years, Sather has proved completely ineffective as a manager of freely flowing wealth.

So if recent history holds with the Rangers, Pavel Bure will mostly not play while being paid $10 million, and Eric Lindros will avoid injury and play a lot, though not score much, while again turning his $2.7 million base into an incentive-laden $9.5 million annual earning.

And Mark Messier will be allowed to find a way to come back at the age of 43, and Bobby Holik will be asked to play like a top centerman (to match his $9 million salary) when really all he ever was was the best checking line center in the East.

Of course, we're just scratching the surface here when it comes to Ranger problems.

Brian Leetch and Mike Richter (season-ending and probably a career-ending concussion) revisited injury woes. Moves to bolster the long-sagging Rangers defensive corps (Darius Kasparaitis signed at ridiculous money, a trade for Boris Mironov) were disappointments.

And Bryan Trottier, a legend for a rival New York team, was brought in at great expense for his long-sought first chance as a NHL head coach ... and was given just a few months to prove he was the wrong man for the job.

It all wound up going wrong for a sixth straight spring. But at least Glen got to coach again. And he liked it ... hey, Glen.

Looking ahead
After failing to woo Larry Robinson to coach this merry band of overpaid underachievers, Sather, who went 11-10-4-3 after replacing Trottier on Jan. 30, has decided to stay in the job himself. Good luck.

But maybe Glen's just feeling lucky. Maybe he thinks that with this one last season of open-wallet warfare before the 2004 labor layoff, that his exercises in economics will finally start paying off.

Maybe Lindros will start to play at least a semblance of the physical game he employed in Philadelphia, killing off these Rangers so many times in the process. Of course, Eric knows he has to avoid concussions to attain his bonuses, but he was so careful last season he only scored 19 goals and most of his 141 penalty minutes were of the hurtful obstruction kind.

Maybe Petr Nedved (27 goals, 58 points in 78 games) can put in another solid season in which he proved capable of playing both ends of the ice.

Maybe Alexei Kovalev and Anson Carter, two league superstars the Rangers essentially purchased through trades taking advantage of the failing economic systems in Pittsburgh and Edmonton, can find their feet and play much better than they did in their short New York stints last season.

Maybe the Rangers finally understand that Jamie Lundmark can play when given the chance. Maybe the Rangers finally understand that Matthew Barnaby and Sandy McCarthy can't be expected to play leading roles or a lot of minutes.

Maybe -- OK, this is a real reach -- Bure can go through a whole season without getting hurt or as much as feeling a twinge in those wrecked knees of his. The Rangers could use 40 goals out of him instead of the 40 games played he usually gives them.

Maybe Messier (40 points in 78 games before dropping over with exhaustion) has something left. Maybe Leetch (brilliant again, but only 51 games played) can stay somewhat healthy. Maybe Sather will even get up and sign these two, aged, unrestricted free agents before somebody else has the bright idea of giving them a one-year contract to act as a pricey gate attraction.

If the Rangers do bring them back, it would mean Sather the coach has to learn to limit Messier's minutes. And it would mean Sather the general manager has to improve upon the two-year, $12 million offer at which Leetch has already turned his nose up.

It's not so easy, this job, is it? Sather has found this to be true. But if he's as lucky as he thinks he is, this franchise that always finishes No. 1 in the money wasted race would finally achieve something else for the first time in seven unlucky years.

Maybe the Rangers can win a pre-labor war playoff spot? Hey Glen...

Rob Parent of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.