Wow, were in 7th place. A month ago, who woulda thunk it, and yet, here we stand. Its very rare when I show emotion sitting on my comfy sofa with my feet up on my ottoman, but when Jagr (originally I thought it was Nylander) scored that goal, I jumped out of my seat, started screaming “ITS ABOUT TIME”, holding my arms up in triumph. Comon, admit it, you did it too!
This game was ALL about the unlucky bounces. The Penguins got burnt on both goals by multiple deflections, and the Rangers similarly deflected a puck right onto the tape of an opposing player. The Rangers also did yet another seminar on “How to make the opposing goalie look like Jacques Plante” I counted a MINIMUM of 4 times the Rangers had 3/4 of the net wide open and elected to shoot it directly into the out of position Thibault. Its just amazing how a goalie can play fairly well, and look like a world beater against us.
Still though, they say you make your own breaks, and for one night at least, we did.
How about the king Henrik Lundqvist? Yet another sub 3 goal game allowing only 1. The guy has just been remarkable. I dont know how you can justify sitting him for any games from here on out (unless the last game or 2 ends up being inconsequential for us). You want to talk about MVP, right now Henrik would get my team MVP vote hands down (league MVP has to be Crosby).
Also, kudos to the VS camera crew for catching several expletives uttered during tonights telecast, its hockey baby, cursing is part of the game!
Now, here are the Projections which I am sure you are all eagerly awaiting:
How this works:
Basically what I do, is to take the points a team has managed till now, divide it by the games played, then multiply it by 82. That should accurately project what the team should finish like, unless there is an extreme streak one way or the other. I will no longer be including the points per game column because lets face it, you don’t care how many points per game!
| Current Rank |
Team | Games Played | Points | Projected Final Points |
Projected Rank |
| 6 | Tampa Bay | 73 | 82 | 93 | 6 |
| 7 | NY Rangers | 73 | 81 | 91 | 7 |
| 8 | Carolina | 73 | 80 | 90 | 9 |
| 9 | NY Islanders | 71 | 78 | 91 | 8 |
| 10 | Toronto | 72 | 78 | 89 | 10 |
| 11 | Montreal | 73 | 78 | 88 | 11 |
As you can see,according to tonights calculations, I project the Rangers as MAKING the playoffs. Despite the pojections showing the Rangers tying Islanders with 91 points I have given the Rangers the 7th spot due to them having 2 more wins than the Islanders. Therefore using these numbers we can project what the Rangers would have to go over the remaining 9 games in order to secure the projected 91 points needed to secure the final playoff spot:
5-4-0
4-3-2
3-2-4
2-1-6
1-0-8
-Inferno
