One of my favorite movies of all time is the star wars spoof, SpaceBalls. During the movie there is a hilarious scene where Rick Moranis as Darth Helmet yells “Foooooled You!” to Princess Vespa. Here is that moment—>
Basically, MSG network should have simply cut off the rest of the game once the Rangers managed to tie it at 5-5, and played that clip on infinite loop (or till the game was over time wise). Why? Because all the hopes, all the possibilities, all the emotions that I got built up as the Rangers mounted an improbable come back, were immediately yanked away as the Rangers took a collective dump on the ice at the rock.
11 seconds after they tied the game, they gave up the lead…for good. Seconds after that, they gave up another….and another. 8 goals in all is what this Defensive stalwart of a team gave up, and the worst part about all this? I didn’t think Henrik was all that bad. Where were the goals scored? Right in front, with nobody guarding those men, time after time after time the Devils had 3 on 1’s down low and played tic tac toe to put the puck into the net. Time after time the Devils had breakaways, and odd man rushes and put the puck in the net. Lundqvist wasn’t spectacular, but he was far from the problem.
At this point, this team needs a huge kick in the ass, you know what I advocate, the kicking out of that bum Tom Renney who has gotten the most leeway for accomplishing NOTHING that I have ever seen. But if you aren’t going to fire Renney, then you need to make a trade, you need to send Lauri Korpikoski back down, you need to waive some guys, you need to bench a star. You need to tell them that this is simply unacceptable.
Oh, and you need to get me Mats Sundin, and hell, at this point I would welcome Brendan Shanahan as well, because we are clearly lacking some leadership in that room to get these guys motivated to play 60 minutes of hockey.
Here are the updated “True Standings”: