I was getting a little annoyed at the Rangers ugly record at home following tonight’s loss against the slew-footing Penguins, and wanted to dig a little deeper, so I did a tiny bit of research. Here are some numbers for ya.

Number of Rangers Games VS Playoff Teams at Home: 7
Number of Rangers Games VS Non-Playoff Teams at Home: 6

Number of Rangers Games VS Playoff Teams on the Road: 5
Number of Rangers Games VS Non-Playoff Teams on the Road: 8

Rangers record VS Playoff Teams: 3-9-0
Rangers record VS Non-Playoff Teams: 11-2-1

Percentage of Points Won at Home: 42%
Percentage of Points Won on the Road: 69%

So, what do we take away from this? The Rangers are a team that beats up on the crap teams, and get beat up by the better teams. But why is that? I think it’s fairly simple. The crap teams either have a lot of talent and don’t play hard (See NJ Devils), or have a great work ethic but have zero talent (See Florida Panthers). The Rangers have an OK amount of talent, and work really really hard. So they can overcome the lazy teams with their hard work, and they can overcome the zero talent teams with their (barely) better talent. However the better teams, your Washingtons, your Pittsburghs, your Philadelphias…they have talent AND work ethic. And when mediocre talent + work ethic plays against superior talent + work ethic, the superior talent will win out…well, 9 out of 12 times I guess. That’s what happened tonight. We played a team that is more talented than us, and that works just as hard as we do. Result? 3-1 loss. This game should not be a surprise to anyone. The Rangers don’t match up against the top teams in the East, West, or in any league. They get by on work ethic, and against teams that work hard and can throw out that kind of firepower, we just don’t stand a chance.

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Yeah, the Rangers had another mediocre game in terms of execution, but you can’t help but be happy with the gritty way the Rangers eked out a win. Sure, it was against a mediocre team, but the Rangers are a tired team, an injured team, a sick team, and wins, no matter how you get them, are important.

I was very happy that Michal Rozsival was finally back in the lineup, hopefully this spells the end of the Matt Gilroy era as a Ranger. Rozsival had 1 bad play all night, and considering he’s been out for well over a week, that’s probably good news. Of equal importance was the fabulous play of Henrik Lundqvist. He sure looks like he is back on his game, perhaps it was just a bout with the flu, or perhaps it was his regular bout with some inconsistency that he has a few times a year, but whatever it is, it is vital for this teams success that Henrik be at the top of his game. He’s good enough to steal the team a win when they don’t play their best, and tonight was an example of that. The Rangers have proven they can win without their best offensive player in the lineup, but without Henrik, they don’t stand a chance. He’s been the most important player on this team since the moment he came into the NHL.

Kudos to Brandon Dubinsky, he had another dominating game. Dubi is very quickly becoming a legitimate first line player, a home grown first liner…when was the last time that happened?

OK, off to bed!

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The Rangers played a truly awful game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and as such they paid the price with a serious ass whooping that was only slightly tempered when the Lightning decided to focus solely on setting up Ryan Malone for the hat trick. Tonight, in my personal opinion, the Rangers still played a pretty awful game, and the only reason they didnt get slaughtered tonight was because the Florida Panthers have about as much offensive firepower as my beer league team. The Panthers outshot the Rangers by a greater than 2-1 margin. They had numerous glorious scoring chances and if not for their inability to hit the net, or their ability to put the puck anywhere except for Henriks chest, they would have easily won. Make no mistake about it folks, we didn’t deserve to win this one tonight. We only won because of the ineptitude of our opposition.

I do, however, like what Tortorella did with the lines. His in game feel, as usual, was impeccable. Torts swapped Avery for Frolov and gave Avery a lot of the big minutes in the game, and Frolov as few shifts as possible. I was never happy with the Frolov signing, and so far this season he has lived up to my billing. A total waste of a contract. Equally abhorrent has been the play of Matt Gilroy. Gilroy has been flat out awful in his own zone, constantly causing Michael Sauer to completely vacate his side in preparation for Gilroy screwing up. Give some serious kudos to Sauer, his play has been absolutely phenomenal, and his ability to offset Gilroys awful play is nothing short of a marvel.

The Rangers need to get back to basics here and play their pressure game. They have to play balls to the wall as I have discussed repeatedly, and they have to play North American hockey. A team that is not very talented can’t try to play like a team that is, you have games like tonight if they do.

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I’m too disgusted to make a post game writeup tonight. I feel like I was hit in the face with a tire, like Mary.

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There are ebbs and flows to every hockey game, but tonights seemed to have varying degrees of extremes. The game just kept flipping back and forth from utter domination by one side, to utter domination by the other, with the Flames getting the nod for overall play, but the Rangers having their fare share of dominant periods themselves. It seemed like when the Rangers decided to play on their toes, ie, be proactive and make things happen, they were unstoppable, and likewise when they let the play come to them, they were absolutely overwhelmed. The key to this team is to take the fight to the opposition and outwork the heck out of them. The Rangers did a good job of doing that in spurts here and there. They also got a tremendous performance by Biron tonight. Give credit to Torts, it was a very smart move to put Biron back in there (one I happen to agree with by the way). A coach should have the feel for his club, and right now Biron has the hot hand, ride him while you can, especially during a ridiculously busy week here. Henrik is the man, everyone knows it, but getting him some time off early will only benefit us down the stretch.

I also wanted to mention that 2 defenseman had noteworthy moments in the game. Michael Sauer and fellow 2005 draft pick Marc Staal both had moments that had me grinning ear to ear. One thing we can all agree on is that our D lacks snarl. Hence why the Rangers made the incomprehensible decision to pass by Fowler, Gormley, etc to take McIlrath. But tonight you saw Sauer throw a dirty hit and back it up with 2 fights, and you saw Marc Staal absolutely obliterate Stajan with a totally clean open ice hit that I swear I could feel through my TV. Marc, keep doing that on a regular basis, you you’ll go from one of the 15 best defenseman in the game today, to one of the 5 best defenseman in the game today.

OK, that’s all for now. Wednesday should be a treat, getting to see Stamkos do his thing.

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First thing, “Wild”, is just the lamest name ever. Seriously. What the hell kinda name is that for a team? I liked the Northstars better, granted with Dallas its tough to get that name to work. But Wild?

I digress. This was an excellent rebound effort by the Rangers. Note the word effort. As mentioned yesterday the Rangers must outwork their opposition to stand a chance, and tonight they did so for the vast majority of the game. Granted, down the stretch in this one, once it got out of hand, the Rangers seemed to relax, and you got to see first hand what happens to a team with very little talent who doesn’t work hard. Tonight the goaltending was at least as poor as it was yesterday, but the hard work helped us out. I know Biron only gave up 2, but he looked shaky all night long. Made easy saves look harder than they were, and his rebound control was simply awful. Luckily the Rangers were the first ones to all those rebounds, and it made Biron look a lot better than he was. That’s what happens when you give your goalie some help. Henrik wasn’t good yesterday, but the team in front of him gave him almost no help whatsoever.

Give Derek Stepan a lot of credit. He played a great game tonight and has given the Rangers a legit center to play with the top line. I do however question Torts’ decision to break up the Dubinsky – Anisimov – Callahan line by flip flopping the 4th line center Christensen with Anisimov. Granted Anisimov scored while playing with that line, but you have to question that move by the coach. Not sure why he would break up the best line we’ve had all season, by far and away. Also you have to love the gutsy effort that Prust showed you tonight. You could see a noticeable limp in his stride all night long, but the kid busted his butt all night to get to loose pucks, it earned him an assist, and would have earned him another if Fedotenko hadn’t hit the post on a great setup by him. Love the heart this kid has.

OK, going to bed, been a long day, and I have a game tomorrow.

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Yep, that time of the year again. The time when I get really angry about the Rangers effort. Luckily so far this year it has not been necessary. The Rangers have worked extremely hard in nearly every game so far this year.

It was bound to end sometime, looks like that time was tonight. The Rangers were quite simply outworked every minute of every shift from the start of the game till the end of the game. Forwards, Defense, Goalie, everyone looked flat, lazy, and horrible. The knee jerk reaction is probably to tear Michael Del Zotto a new one and to blame him for the loss, especially considering nearly every shift he had in the game seemed to end with either the Avs scoring, or at least getting a quality scoring chance. Del Zotto was awful, true, but he wasn’t the only one. Christensen was terrible, Gilroy was a disaster, Boyle looked like the Boyle from last year, Sean Avery didn’t do squat out there, Henrik Lundqvist was extremely shaky in this one. Simply put, everything seemed to go wrong.

Here’s the problem though. The Rangers are not a talented team. We are wholly mediocre in terms of sheer talent. A team that does not have talent is by definition forced to outwork the opposition since they can not go toe to toe with the more talented team. For the most part, the Rangers have been successful at that, but not tonight. Let’s just hope they don’t make a habit out of it.

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The Rangers should have won this one. You have to put the onus on them for not putting it away, for sure, but they still played well enough to get at least one point if not the dubya. To me the biggest thing here is, Eric Christensen has to shoot that puck, and Henrik Lundqvist can not give up that goal. That was the difference in the game. EC decides an open net at point blank range is too difficult for him a-la Patrick Stefan and forces a pass to Gabby that was impossible to handle. You can’t do that Eric, this is the NHL. You are getting over a million dollars a year to shoot that effing puck. Henrik Lundqvist is getting 6.5 million dollars a year to stop that effing puck, but he has built more than enough cache with me for me to let it slide, Christensen on the other hand…not so much.

I feel like there isn’t much else to say about the game. The 5 on 3 was close as Dubinsky seemed to flat out miss a net, but it was a difficult angle and pass to handle, and the new jerseys look absolutely gorgeous. Other than that, I’ve got nothing. Sorry I dont have much to add in this one, was a fairly cut and dry game.

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Its 5am here so you know I’m tired. Usually when I have to watch a game after being out late I fast forward past everything except the action (ie commercials, intermission stuff, timeouts, etc) and never watch the post game show. Tonight though, despite the extreme late time, I decided to watch it. Only because I wanted to hear John Tortorella tear the refs a new one. Sadly Torts decided to hold his tongue (I prefer the douchebag Torts to this new, kindler, gentler Torts, but he’s still a great coach) and I was left out in the dark on his thoughts.

But you don’t have to worry about me, I will tell you exactly what I think about the refs, and that is tonight was an absolute disgrace. There is nothing else you can say. We won the game, and the entire time all I could do was notice how godawful the reffing was. Malkin holds Callahan, Cally gets the penalty. Malkin elbows Girardi in the face, no call. Crosby crosschecks Staal, Staal goes to the box. It was all night, and it was consistent. I am sure the conspiracy nuts are going to be all about how the refs are in the Penguins pockets, and it’s tough not to agree with them. Look, the fact of the matter is, more skilled players, and teams that control the puck for long periods of time, will get penalty calls. It’s the nature of the game. The Rangers frankly deserved to be short handed more than the Penguins. But 6-0? Are you frikkin kidding me? 4-2? Yeah, I could live with that, probably a fair representation of the actual penalties that took place. 6-0 though is nothing short of criminal.

I don’t cheer or even get super excited when the Rangers score a goal, even a game winner usually doesn’t get my heart pumping or get me out of my chair. But tonight I felt like we won the Stanley Cup, because when we scored the game winner, it felt like a giant F-U to the NHL, the Penguins, and the Refs.

Ok, time to hit the sack. When you get a chance though, check out this post from the HFBoards…a really interesting read.

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Sometimes you play a team that is just way better than you. A team you just know is going to beat you and if somehow you are able to keep in the game you can almost consider it a moral victory. Sometimes the opposite happens. Today was an example of that. Look, let’s face it, the Oilers are an awful team. The coach is overrated (you all know I don’t care for Renney whatsoever), and their defense is horrific. They are a team built from the forwards back instead from the goalie out, and it showed. They looked pretty good in the offensive zone, and looked like a crazy circus freak in their own zone. The Rangers took advantage, as they should have. The important thing here is, do the Rangers use this as a stepping stone to get even better, or do they get a little cocky and instead go on an extended losing streak because of it. It has happened before, and I am sure it will happen again.

Hopefully the Rangers just extract the good things from this game, build on it, and realize that beating up on a crappy team means nothing in the grand scheme of things. So, what are the good things to take out? Well let’s start at the top. Finally Alexander Frolov played a good game. He scored goals that were legitimate goals, he set up a few plays, and he generated some good chances with his play along the boards. Gabby looked like Gabby, and Artem Anisimov scored another goal. You also had an extremely solid 3rd line that looks like it could be a keeper in Fedotenko – Boyle – Prust. On the flip side, I thought Matt Gilroy was absolutely AWFUL out there, and Biron gave up an unfathomably bad goal to actually make the Rangers trail in a game that should have been, and eventually was, a laugher.

Some good, some bad. Let’s hope they build on it and play better tomorrow. The Pens are not the Oilers, they have talent and a winning pedigree.

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