One thing I cant stand is embellishment. Rangers, for all their bad points haven’t been embellishing anything for years now. But today I definitely saw some embellishment, particularly by Kaspar who threw his head back and grabbed his face when the stick of Roberts never made contact with his face (as far as I could tell from the replays). I almost want to give the goal back (ok not really), you hate to win when you cheat, and embellishing is definitely cheating. Lets get this stuff out of the game fellas, it has no place here.
On to the actual period, which did show some positive signs from the Rangers, who did seem to keep their heads up, and take the appropriate play, of course its hard to really gauge the period when the good guys spent about half of it on the power play. Credit the Panthers who have a tenacious penalty kill for keeping it close, it could have been worse, but they kept everything to the outside, and limited the quality chances against.
Also credit Tom Renney (omg!) for trying some new stuff on the powerplay, particularly noticeable was a new 5 on 3 alignment, which didnt score, but looked pretty good. They had Straka and Cullen at the points, Jagr and Shanahan in their “offices” and Hall parked in front. Seemed pretty smart to me.
-Inferno
