I just came back from a game, where I had my team win a game in the first 18 seconds of Overtime, where I had the best seats to a hockey game that I have ever sat in my life (glass seats, thanks to a friend, Ranger fans are the best!), where I was literally feet from where Scotty Gomez scored his goal, and all I could think to myself was this. The Rangers just went toe to toe with the Atlanta Thrashers, and barely squeaked by. This is the, we have only 1 offensive player Thrashers. The, we have half our roster injured Thrashers. The, Inferno predicted us to be right at the bottom of the NHL, and oh look that’s where we are Atlanta Thrashers. And you know what? For most of the game, I felt the Thrashers were the better team.
That just sickens me.
After watching an exciting game, all I can do is feel disgusted at my team, for making a game so close, against a team they should just annihilate.
Was the effort there? Yeah, pretty much. I didn’t see much floating, except for Zherdev, who had a very poor game in my personal opinion. There weren’t any goats really, just a team wide stinker where they made the opposition look a lot better than it is, and where they made their team look a whole lot shittier than they are. I know the NYRangersCast crew wants to take the whole “this is the team, they just aren’t good” approach to the Rangers, but this blogger is nowhere near ready to accept that. We are far superior than the Thrashers. We are healthy, and we have 10 times the talent they do. We should have slaughtered them 10-0. In fact I was at a Thrashers game where the Flyers won 7-0, so I know that it certainly is possible to run up the score on this team.
But why didn’t we? Because right now, we are the Atlanta Thrashers, with a full payroll, and no legitimate excuses like “we are rebuilding”. We are a medicore team, that squeaks by other mediocre teams, and that occasionally will beat the better teams, but by and large should get, and often do get, killed by them.
We won, and I was a few feet from the play, cheering my lungs out, and 15 minutes later, the cold hard reality of what I saw hit me….Hopefully, it hit you too.