Sure, Henrik Lundqvist lost the shutout. Sure, Chris Drury missed a wide open net when he could have buried the Lightning for dead. Sure, Jaromir the Anchor Jagr continues to play horrible hockey, and was directly responsible for losing Henrik’s shutout. Sure, the Rangers probably got the benefit of a call when the Lightning probably did score a goal, but there wasn’t a decisive angle to prove it. Sure, the Rangers may have suffered yet another devastating injury when Sean Avery took a puck off his hand. Sure, the game winning goal was so soft even Uncle Daddy would have stopped it.

But the important thing is that they got the 2 points right?

Honestly, I’m not really sure. I always am one to preach that game play is far more important than game results, and from that standpoint I really wasn’t all that happy with what I saw. However the fact that the Rangers played without so many key players, and were playing with a defense that has 5 players averaging the ripe old age of 23.4 years makes me a little hesitant to bury this team.

Let’s not kid ourselves, Henrik was a brick wall tonight. The Lightning should have had a half dozen or more goals, but Henrik was borderline godlike in his performance tonight. However it’s hard to kill a team when they give up zero goals for the first 59 minutes and 44 seconds.

So that leaves me wanting to just kill this team for its atrocious offensive numbers, and for giving up a plethora of golden opportunities for the Lightning to bury, but unable to do so because of extenuating circumstances.

Perhaps the Rangers should give Thanks to this blogger for showing some restraint

Rangers Review | Comments Off

Usually when you call a player the anchor of a team, it is taken to be a good thing, as if, he is the steadying player on the ice, the one who holds the team together, then one you can always depend on.

Right now, when I call Jaromir Jagr the anchor of this team, I mean it in a more literal sense. Right now Jaromir Jagrs lackadaisical effort level and inability to do ANYTHING with, or without the puck, is literally stagnating the entire offensive attack. Everytime his line is on the ice, he either is turning the puck over, or their line is trapped deep for their entire shift, leading the other players on the ice to have to dig them out.

At this moment I think the 5 best players on the ice are:

The king is showing why he should be the runaway choice for Vezina and Hart trophy winners, at least for any voter with common sense. He’s standing on his head out there, and his D and Offense is giving him just about nothing to work with.

The Rangers are looking very much like a team playing without their opening night top defensive pair, without their top line left winger, and without their sparkplug 3rd line winger. I praised the Rangers for their depth, but the injuries that they have sustained have been tough to combat, especially when the players you want to be your anchors, are actually playing like literal anchors instead of figurative anchors.

Rangers Review | Comments Off

No, it’s nothing big, so don’t freak out. Actually I thought we played fairly well. The Lightning have an absolutely spectacular offensive game, and style, that is very hard to contain for 60 minutes. These arent the New Jersey Devils here folks, they have some spectacular offensive players. So what is it I don’t like? It was something I saw Marc Staal do in that period.

Now that the D are actively getting involved in the offense, scoring (assuming my memory is right here) 6 straight Rangers goals, they seem to be doing things that are very uncharacteristic. The thing that I don’t like that Staal did was what won us the game against the Pens the other day. Thats the defenseman getting involved in the offense when there are fewer than 5 forwards/defenseman on the ice for your team. It’s a big no-no in my book. I don’t mind the defenseman getting involved by taking point shots when it’s 4 on 4, or worse, but I just don’t like it when they take the puck deep, with so much more open ice in your zone, you leave yourself wide open for a counter attack, and counter attack the Lightning did by nearly getting a breakaway, and at least drawing a necessary penalty on Jagr.

You can blame Jagr on that play too, but if the defenseman is the one who actively made the decision to pinch, and Jagr is NOT the guy I want standing between the Lightning forward, and Henrik Lundqvist.

I have no problems at all with the Defenseman getting more involved when we are on the PP or at 5 on 5. But don’t do it with 4 men or less, despite what happened against the Pens.

Rangers Review | Comments Off