They say , To err is human, but forgiveness is divine. They also say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me (or if you are our president…we won’t get fooled again). Regardless, I think Ive had enough of Bill McCrearys bull. It seems every single time the guy is reffing games by us, we get some pretty soft calls against us, and don’t get anything back in return. A call on Nigel Dawes that baffles the mind. A call on Marc Staal that is worse than a “ticky tacky” call. A call on Fredrick Sjostrom that…well…was despicable. The good news is the Rangers overcame a ridiculously tilted game to pick up yet another win to continue their streak of no regulation losses to 13 games (10-0-3 as I am sure you know by now). The bad news is you can bet your ass McCreary is going to be on the playoff officiating roster, and if we have to play any games with him, its going to be tough games to win.
You know the reffing must be bad when the Rangers are on an incredible hot streak, and yet all the message boards are filled with complaints on the reffing. And I whole heartedly agree. For the most part the reffing has been awful this year. Awful yes, but generally not one sided. The reffing tends to be terrible for both teams where both teams either get shafted out of calls, or both teams take penalties that arent penalties. But I have noticed a marked increase in my complaints of one sided reffing when McCreary is the ref, and this is no difference. Not only did he call 3 ridiculous calls on us, but he missed a trip on Callahan, a trip on Gomez and a pretty vicious elbow to the face of Sean Avery (though he did, obviously, manage to catch Seans retaliatory shove to Vaneks face, which was a good call).
The game itself was quite one sided in my personal opinion. The power plays made it seem a bit more even than it was, but the Rangers seemed to control the play for the most part, but were a little sloppy with the puck, and their execution inside the offensive zone. Too many times they passed it to vacated areas, or simply turned it over without getting a quality chance on goal. The Rangers play has deteriorated a bit in the past 4 games, but we are still winning. I dont know if thats a good thing, or a bad. As I have mentioned before, we tend to go in cycles, where we play great, then start to get cocky, and overconfident, and then start “getting away with mistakes”, and when you win while getting away with mistakes, those mistakes become habits. Those habits lead to losing streaks, and a losing streak at this time of the year can carry right back into the playoffs.
It resides with Tom Renney to correct the flaws that have crept up (turnovers in the neutral zone really stands out, as does the tendancy to let defenseman get in behind the play a bit too often). I have given the coach a lot of crap this year, but he has managed to turn the ship around in a huge way, so I will trust that he sees what is pretty clear to most of us, the Rangers are not playing that sharp right now, despite the winning streak. At the very least, they aren’t playing at their best, which definitely should bring a smile to your face, if the best is yet to come.
