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.
