Well, we won. And we did so against a pretty complete Devils team with the exception of injuries to Langenbrunner, Jannsen, and I believe Colin White and Brodeur just not dressing. Other than that you had their whole team. The Rangers on the other hand didn’t play Jagr, Gomez, Hossa, Drury, Prucha, Lundqvist, Rozsival, Malik, Tyutin, and Mara. So basically 5 of your top 6 scoring forwards, and your #1,2,3, and 5 defenseman.
And they did so in a fairly dominating way for most of the game. I was however sad to see Big Vally play a relatively poor game in net for the Blueshirts. He looked very slow to react, and outside of a nice glove and blocker save on Parise and Gionta (I believe), he looked shaky. It’s still preseason, so don’t take too much stock in that. Also, the team in front of him played a lot worse than in front of Montoya. Still, there were some really positive things to take from this game, mostly surrounding the youth.
Hugh Jessiman played a fairly good game. He started off strong, then sort of tailed off and was invisible for large stretches (tough for a guy that big). I think he needs to put on more upperbody strength. You can tell his core and legs are very strong, but his upper body could use more bulk.
I only pray I can watch tomorrows game in its entirety. If not, I’m going to flip my lid.
-Inferno
