I think that is what this game really was all about. The Rangers didn’t do anything…well, except for their powerplay (i’ll get into that in a minute) to beat themselves. They played a phenomenal game in their own zone, they controlled the puck in the offensive zone, they got the puck to the net, they got traffic in front of the goalie for the second and 3rd chances, and they flat out destroyed the Kovalchukless Thrashers (as they should be on Thursday) from start to finish.

Good, now do it again.

And again.

And again.

Rangers have put themselves in this predicament. Where after a ridiculously one sided game, the fans can’t even get pumped about it. How sad is that? It’s ok though, sometimes that’s all it takes before a team goes on a crazy run, a win against a team that plays like crap.

I must say, I was surprised at how well these lines worked tonight. IMHO they didn’t make any kind of sense, but I guess by distributing the talent a bit more, the Rangers were able to sustain a more consistent offensive threat. This way you really can’t just go after 1 line, when all 3 are playing well and scoring.

With regards to the powerplay, I will give the Rangers credit, in that they didn’t allow their terrible power play to cause them to lose momentum. In fact just the opposite, it was almost as though they were waiting for the power play to end so they could turn on the offensive juice. At even strength, this was like watching that episode of South Park where the Detroit Red Wings play against the toddlers, and just annihilate them. Now the Rangers seriously can not rest on their laurels. If you were thinking the Rangers problems were solved by this one game, you thought wrong, because let’s face it, the Thrashers played terribly, and we still were unable to score on the Power Play. Beat a team that actually plays well, score on your power play, win 5 more games in a row, then we’ll talk.

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The Good: The Rangers 5 on 5 and Penalty Killing looks superb out there. It could be a function of how putrid the Thrashers are playing, but I choose to give them credit, they look great.

The Bad: The Atlanta Thrashers look bad. I mean real bad. Way worse than us. How on earth this team has beaten us twice already this year, and how they are contending for a playoff team is beyond me. They are literally a 2 person team. If Ilya and Hossa don’t go, they don’t go. Right now, Lehtonen is going big time, but the rest of these schlubs look like they should be playing for the Rangers….and yeah, that was an insult to our team.

The Ugly: The power play, if possible, looks to have gotten worse. How is that even humanly possible, particularly with the Thrashers having a horrendous PK, and us playing so damn good at Even Strength is well beyond my puny neurons. I am baffled at this team when they are up a man. This game should be, at least, 6-0 right now.

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When looking ahead to this season, I figured we would get a team that could just take over the game in the offensive zone, but also play stingy, nearly suffocating defense to boot, while getting stellar goaltending.

That is exactly what we got in this period. The goaltending wasn’t stellar, but I’d rather Henrik look good making 4 or 5 easy saves rather than him look spectacular making 25 saves in a period and letting in 2 goals. Shots on goal are drastically in our favor, but more importantly we have the quality to go with that quantity. BTW, how did we get the first goal? Oh yeah, goal mouth scramble with men in front and us getting the puck to the net. Strange phenomenon for us to see aye?

Ilya Kovalchuk shouldn’t have got a 5 minute majors and a game misconduct on that play. He should have got a 2 minute minor, a 5 minute major, and a suspension. That was a despicable play by Ilya, and I am really surprised at him. First he throws a high hit, with an elbow on Rozsival, then 10 seconds later dangerously boards him. If that isn’t suspension worthy, then I’m not sure what is.

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