See, I have no problem killing Henrik in this one. 2 goals given up that he absolutely should have had (I don’t think either was hit after the initial shot.). The first was a weak wrister by Cole that somehow found its way to the back of the net, and the second was a wrister by Cole that Betts deflected from behind to make it a knuckle puck. Even though Joe Michelletti insisted that it went in after a second tap in by Cole, I have looked at the replay a dozen times on High Def, and I just don’t see Cole touching the puck the second time. It just fluttered between Henriks legs. Those are 2 bad goals. Still, Henrik did make a number of good saves, and was good when it counted. The Rangers also won a game I never really felt worried about. Why? Because they didn’t allow the Canes to sustain pressure sans Power Play. When on even strength the Rangers held the puck in their zone and forced the Canes to do one thing they don’t do well. Defend.
The 2 new guys didn’t make much of an impression on me. Sjostrom had a nice rush, and looked energetic. But he really did not make my jaw drop with his speed (Avery, Straka, and Gomez all look faster than him), nor did he impress me with his defensive prowess in any dramatic way (like for example Blair Betts does). So he was kinda meh to me. Backman on the other hand was disastrous in that 3rd period. He took 10 minutes worth of penalties in the game (albeit 1 was accidental, 1 was an aggression penalty sticking up for himself, and 2 were kind of soft calls/dives.) But in a game that was reffed on a level bordering the ridiculous, it’s hard to kill a guy for taking so many penalties. Especially when we won the game. Backman needs to just forget about the 3rd period, and play more like he did in the first. I thought he was good in the first, and decent in the second, but the 3rd was not good.
The story of this game is once again the play of the top line. Jagr, Avery and Dubinsky showing some sick chemistry again, scoring 2 goals, and they could have easily had a few others (Avery sucks on breakaways, he needs to start waiting for the defenseman to catch up to him or something to make it a one on one). Nigel Dawes also delivered a crisp cross ice tape to tape pass to Shanny in a zone Shanny doesn’t miss often from. Shanny also had at least 2 other high quality chances to score in this one so he was definitely into it. All in all, this was a game that wasn’t really as close as the score would have you believe. I truly think Cam Ward stood on his head in this one. He had at least 4 spectacular saves, and another 6 or 7 really really really good ones as well. We coulda won this by a huge margin if he wasn’t so good. But thats how we need to be. Desperate, hungry, and relentless. In the playoffs, the goaltending only gets better from round to round.
I’m loving what im seeing from this team for the most part. They really have me believing theyve turned th…..uhh, never mind.
