The Atlanta fans are classy, polite, honorable, and extremely likeable. They cheer for their team, but never seem to behave in a manner that may challenge the phrase “southern hospitality”. The Atlanta Thrashers though are completely unrepresentative of those they are suppose to represent. They took a ridiculous amount of liberties against the Rangers. Sean Avery should have played with a full face shield with the amount of elbows and punches to his face that went uncalled. The classless Thrasher then went on to throw a gutless body check WELL after the game had finished in an attempt to…..well I’m not exactly sure what that was for, because Its not going to intimidate the Rangers, and all it does is question their heart. It takes a lot of guts to run a guy after the game is over.
2 stats prove very interesting (thanks to Sam Weinman for pointing this out). Atlanta Thrashers SEVERLY out “Thrashed” us (aka out hit us) by a tally of 22-10. However those hits came with a price. Their players were constantly going out of position to throw those hits. Which caused turnovers, and caused puck support to be considerably less than ours. The final tally for giveaways?
Thrashers 12…..Rangers 0
So for all their hitting, all their cheap shotting, all their tough talk, all their classless behavior. They still dont realize that giveaways (aka turnovers) are the single biggest reason teams lose in the playoffs. You turn the puck over, you are screwed. End of story.
How about Henrik Lundqvist folks? Im wondering if you could have scored with a bee-bee against him today. My god was he brilliant. The Thrasher fans all around me were so overwhelmed by his goalkeeping that they actually were forced to stop their “Lundqvist….Lundqvist…Lundqvist…you suck!” chants. It was hilarious, everyone around me couldnt believe how good the kid is. But ive been telling them. Henriks been the best goalie in the NHL for about 4 months now. You can look at his overall stats and be semi-impressed, but if you look a little deeper, youll see a kid who is on absolute fire, and doesnt look like hes slowing down anytime soon.
PS. Renney…you are officially off my list for the remainder of the year. No more negative Renney comments….ok, well maybe a few here and there. Renney did a masterful job of preparing the team. Kovalchuk, no time, no space. Hossa, a guy in his face as soon as he touched the puck, etc etc. You gotta hand it to Tom. He really was “Terrific”.
And finally we have the refs. Heres what Ill say on that. As soon as I saw Mike Leggo was officiating the game. I uttered the F-Bomb, and held my head in my hands. The Thrasher fan sitting to my left was like…what’s the matter man, are you ok? I was like. Mike Leggo is reffing this one, there is no way in hell this game is called fairly. And true enough, the disgraceful reffing of Mike Leggo against the Rangers continued. He’s a terrible ref, and a disgrace to the uniform. How he was ever selected for playoff duty is unfathomable. I simply can not understand how they justify letting this clown, and Mick McGeough ref in the playoffs.
I’m wiped out, Playoff hockey live….there is nothing like it.
Ive done my job Ranger fans, ive done all my dark rituals to satisfy the Hockey Gods….its your turn… *tag, youre it*
-Inferno