You had another game where the Rangers played an inferior opponent past regulation and into a skills competition, you had another game where the Rangers took an entire period of (the 2nd), you had another game where the Rangers looked lackluster at best out there, and a 3rd line of Drury, Callahan, and Dawes that looked like they would struggle in the AHL let alone the NHL, and yet, all I could come away with after this game was….man oh man, what a pretty shootout move by Chris Drury.

I mean, seriously, did you see the fake shot, and super quick move to the backhand only to roof it? That thing was beautiful, and it only proves that this guy has some skill. Why he is having so much trouble translating it into regulation play is beyond me.

With Mats Sundin, their perhaps savior, in the stands the Rangers did nothing to entice him to play with them. The Rangers were lackluster for the majority of this game, often times hearing boos from the Garden faithful, and very infrequently anything positive from them. Henrik Lundqvist was superb, and again, had to be in order for us to pick up the W. Other than that, it was a very mediocre performance, that has done nothing to assuage my feelings of doom and gloom with regards to this club. The defense was horrific, the forwards didn’t generate many quality chances (3 at the most imho), and the Power Play was horrible outside of one very nice pass by Scott Gomez (The PP doesn’t have to score for it to be effective, so long as they are setting up, generating chances, and forcing the goalie to make great saves, by and large we didn’t even have the puck in their zone, it was dump, chase, turnover, and reset almost every time).

One of the few things I was happy about though was the play of Blair Betts. This guy continues to be one of the few Rangers I am proud to have on my team. Here is a guy who earns his check night in and night out. He may not have the best offensive instincts, but he brings his work hat every shift, and leaves everything out on the ice.

Hopefully the next time I am writing, it will be something along the lines of…
Rangers make blockbuster trade, and sign free agent Mats Sundin….but with my luck…

Anyways, let me finish this up with this little tidbit:

The Detroit Red Wings foreign scout flies to Baghdad to watch a young Iraqi
play hockey in the new American sponsored league, and is suitably impressed
and arranges for him to come over to the U.S.

Ken Holland signs him to a one year contract and the kid joins the team for
the preseason.

Two weeks later the Wings are down 4-0 to the Blackhawks with only 10
minutes left. Mike Babcock gives the young Iraqi the nod and he goes in. The
kid is a sensation – scores 4 goals in 10 minutes and wins the game for the
Wings! The fans are delighted, the players and coaches are delighted, and
the media love the new star.

When the player comes off the ice he phones his mom to tell her
about his first day of NHL hockey. “Hello mom, guess what?” he says.
“I played for 10 minutes today, we were 4-0 down, but I scored
4 goals and we won. Everybody loves me, the fans, the media, they all
love me.”

“Wonderful,” says his mom, “Let me tell you about my day. Your father got
shot in the street, your sister and I were ambushed, raped and
beaten, and your brother has joined a gang of looters, and all while you
were having such great time.”

The young Iraqi is very upset. “What can I say mom, but I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re Sorry?” says his mom, “It’s your fault we moved to Detroit
in the first place!”

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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”:

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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.

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Another day, another short handed goal given up. This was pretty much a prototypical Rangers game. Lots of low quality shots on goal, bad turnovers leading to goals, lots of high quality chances given up, very few high quality chances seen, a putrid power play that was again a negative for the day, and another loss.

For the first 40 minutes we played pretty good hockey, but the last 20 minutes…not so much. Scotty Gomez followed up his brilliant -4 performance with a team worst -3 today, and the Rangers continued to look very much like a non playoff team, that they really should be at this point.

I mean, really, what more is there to say? I have said for a while now that I feel the teams biggest problem is Tom Renney, the guy has instituted a style of play that doesn’t make sense for this team. And while it is clear that these players are not trying their hardest night in and night out, it seems to me at least part of the blame for that rides on a coach who is more like a comatose victim than the firebreather we seem to need right now. That guy is definitely available in John Tortarella, but I have my doubts as to it happening since Sather has always been far too patient for my liking with his coaches.

The powerplay continues to boggle the mind with its complete ineptitude, for the 2nd straight season we are likely to finish right near the bottom of the league in terms of our Power Play, part of the blame on that goes squarely on the head coaches shoulders. He has not been able to fix this power play, and even all the Renney apologists have no excuses as to why it hasn’t worked.

I really am at a loss for words at this point. It just becomes more repetition than anything. We continue to play shit hockey, like we have all season, but now, like I always have maintained, the law of averages is catching up. When you play like crap, you will lose. We were somehow doing the opposite for much of this season, but now, it is catching up to us.

As of tonight, here are the updated Eastern Conference standings, not by points, but by winning percentage. IE, total points won/total possible points winnable.

So right now, despite having the easiest schedule to start off the season, despite having a nightmare of a schedule ahead of us, we are really the #5 seed, and by my guess, we will be the #7 seed within 4 weeks unless there is a drastic change in this team, mark my words.

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Here is an email I sent in to the NYRangersCast, I will use this instead of a post game wrap to todays debacle.

Heya fellas, I actually tried to call this one in, but the number kept giving me a “your call did not go through, please hang up and try again” on both the landline, and my cell, so I’m not sure whats up with that.

Anyway, here is what I was going to say:

Basically, I disagree with most of what you guys said last podcast. You basically have done what i consider to be one of the worst things a fan can do, and that is, to accept mediocrity. What you guys said is, well, this is what they are, so i am ok with it. I firmly disagree with that. Let me tell you why.

What do you think of, when you think of the best teams? Odds are you are thinking about the more high powered offensive teams, that can also keep the puck out of their net. The question is, how do those teams keep the puck out of their net? In general, the best teams keep the puck out of their net by playing up tempo offensive hockey, and continually pressing the puck in the oppositions zone. In short, the other team never has a chance to do anything because they are run ragged by the opposition.

So, if that is what you think of when you are talking about the best teams in the league, you clearly are not going to think of the Rangers as one of those teams. Why? Because their ENTIRE game plan is based around playing defense in the defensive zone. Think about it, if everything goes right in a Rangers game, what happens? Realistically, they give up 1, maybe 2 goals, and score 2, maybe 3 goals for the win. THAT is how we play hockey!

And that is my biggest problem with this team, they simply play a retarded brand of hockey. It makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER the way in which this team plays.

Glen Sather built an up tempo, offensive attack team. How does Tom Renney play the team? He plays them as a defense first, cycle and grind the puck out style of club, with midgets and speedsters all over the ice. Does that make sense to you? Tom Renney has been unable to get any offense from this club in basically his entire tenure. Seriously, go look back at the previous seasons, our entire offense was based around Jaromir Jagr scoring goals, when he wasn’t scoring, we didn’t score. Same thing with our Power Play, when JJ isnt there to put the puck in the net, nobody is. Why? Well, seems to me you blame the coach for being unable to do squat in the offensive zone, both with the man up, and 5 on 5.

Let me put this another way.

Which group of forwards do you think is more offensively talented?

In all honesty, ignoring salary, ignoring everything ancillary, which group of forwards do you think is better, plain and simple.

Phil Kessel
Marc Savard
David Krejci
Blake Wheeler
Milan Lucic
Dennis Wideman
Marco Sturm
Michael Ryder
Chuck Kobasew
Patrice Bergeron

OR

Nikolai Zherdev
Scott Gomez
Chris Drury
Markus Naslund
Brandon Dubinsky
Ryan Callahan
Aaron Voros
Nigel Dawes
Freddy Sjostrom
Lauri Korpiskoski

Which do you think is more suited for goal scoring. Be honest here.

I look at both rosters, and I can honestly say, based on talent alone, id say the Rangers are MUCH better, and even at worst, you would call it a push.

And yet, the Bruins goal scoring: 3.32G/G (4th in NHL) and the Rangers goal scoring: 2.41G/G (29th in the NHL)

What does this say to me? This says to me that you do not need to have a team filled with Crosbys and Ovechkins to score goals. You just need a coach with some semblance of an idea of how to best take advantage of the players he has.

So all of this brings me back to my original point. How can you honestly say that this team just isn’t that good when we haven’t really seen a style of hockey that makes sense for this club? You guys yourself have said this a few times in the last few weeks, particularly you Steve. It seems to me we are on the same page, that there is a disconnect between what Sather envisioned this team (by how he built the team) and the manner in which Renney is deploying the team.

If we agree with that, then how on earth can you say this is just how good they are?

If I have a Ferrari, drive it with the parking break on, and see it can’t top 30mph before it starts to die, you won’t see me saying, hey, you know what, I guess thats just how fast Ferraris go. Of course not. You need to first give youself every opportunity to succeed with what you are given, before you can make that judgement, and IMHO this team has all the makings of not a good, but a GREAT team. I agreed with you in the preseason, this team has all the makings of a Stanley Cup contender. But not while Tom Renney continues to drive this Ferrari with the parking break on.

In games where the team shows up (ie, not the habs or panthers games), you see them be most successful when they are pushing the issue. You see it in spurts and flashes, but you don’t see it all the time. Why? Because the Parking break is on.

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Woke up early to pay a speeding ticket, then had a really intense hockey practice of my own, got home close to 1am after the practice (late night practice), just finished watching the game, and now I am beat. I will post a wrap tomorrow.

zzzzzzzzz……

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The NHL has suspended Sean Avery indefinitely for this comment:

“I am really happy to be back in Calgary, I love Canada,” Avery said on camera this morning in Calgary. “I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don’t know what that’s about. Enjoy the game tonight.”

All I can say is, that is by far and away the weakest thing you could possibly do to get a suspension. What next, 5 games for saying “hey goalie, goalie, goalie, goalie” like they did in the Mighty Ducks?

Puhlease, this is some weak sauce right here, the NHL should feel ashamed of themselves.

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