Shortly after lambasting Nigel Dawes, he makes a beautiful, and I really do mean beautiful, play to set up Brandon Dubinsky for his first NHL goal. Brandon has impressed the heck out of me in this one. As you probably remember, I wasn’t too high on the kid, but he really looked rock solid tonight with 1 goal, and 2 posts. He also drew a penalty, and played well with the puck and set up Marcel Hossa for a near gimme goal only to have Marcel shoot it about 4 feet wide.
The Rangers were definitely playing with an injured Jaromir Jagr. You could just tell how much it hurt the guy to skate out there, especially to take the first step. He had no acceleration whatsoever, and really just rotated his body to keep control of the puck rather than skating like he usually does. I saw you sit Jaromir out and let him get healthy. These games mean very little in comparison to the games later in the season and the playoffs.
Henrik also was, you know, pretty good. Making some mind blowing stops, countless of them point blank, and, unlike MAF, he smothered the initial shots or directed rebounds to the corners rather than leaving juicy slot opportunities for the opponents.
The offense is just about there guys, 4 goals, 4, maybe 5 posts,
I have to head off to do some other stuff at the moment, so I’ll just leave it at that.
