Taken from this post courtesy of NYRMatt

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You could look at “the house” being Madison Square Garden. The Rangers home. A place where last year they couldn’t win a game to save their lives. Last year the Rangers were one of the best road teams in the league, but their ineptitude at home cost them a bad first round seed against the Caps who just are not a good matchup for us. That inability to win at home hurt the team in the playoffs as well, when the team couldn’t win games they had late leads in, and just plain couldn’t do what it took to get past the high octane Caps. This year the Rangers are just as good at home as they are on the road. That difference has rocketed the Rangers up the standings to tops in the East, a full 2 points ahead of Bawstun with all games in hand by the Brooins played. They are 2 points behind the scorching hot Red Wings, with 2 games in hand on Detroit.

The house, though, is also the area in front of the goal, the zone where all the dirty goals tend to be scored. The area in front of the net, and into the high slot area where teams try to funnel the puck to get scoring chances. The Rangers, for the most part, were outstanding in that area of the ice tonight. Forcing the vast majority of the shots outside of that area. While they did have some breakdowns, as inevitably happens, Henrik Lundqvist was there, earning every bit of his 6.5 million dollar a year salary.

It is the Rangers willingness to sacrifice their bodies to block shots while in the house that causes teams to think twice about shooting. The Jets were definitely passing up shots because they knew the shots would most likely be blocked. Limit those shots against, and you limit the oppositions ability to score goals. It’s a fairly simple formula to understand, but it’s taken the Rangers a while to get that through their heads.

Heading into the break it’s tough to imagine a better first half. The Rangers were an incredibly consistent team, and really, if they didn’t have that ridiculous schedule to start the season, they could very well be even better than they are now. They have withstood some pretty bad injuries to their D, getting very little offensive production from their leading point scorer from a year ago, and have one of the worst power plays in the league. Somehow, they carry the best winning % in the NHL into the break? Why? Because of a guy who deserves the Jack Adams award. That’s why.

See you guys in a week!

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As a die hard New York Yankee supporter, I clearly hate all things Boston (except my 4 cousins and 1 uncle who live up there). So maybe I’m not the most impartial person in the world when it comes to these things. But, I can honestly say right now that I think Tim Thomas is a giant DICK. I don’t usually curse on this blog, but I think it applies here. As you may or may not have heard, Tim Thomas decided to skip the visit to the White House due to his political beliefs. Look. I don’t care if you are the biggest left winger in the world or the biggest neo-con in the world. When you are invited to meet with the President, you meet with him. I don’t care if its George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama. You shake the mans hand. He’s the effing PRESIDENT. Show some class you piece of crap.

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The Boston Bruins are a great team. Make no mistake about it. They deserve to be the Stanley Cup Champs. They are fundamentally nearly flawless. They play an outstanding defensive game. They have some superb upper end offense, and an outstanding defense with superb goaltending. They work hard each and every shift, and throw their bodies around with reckless abandon.

Now. Re-read that entire sentence, and instead of Boston Bruins, swap it out for New York Rangers. Outside of the Stanley Cup champs remark, doesn’t all that stuff apply to the Rangers as well? There’s a reason. The Rangers play a damn near identical style to the Bruins. The Bruins are probably better at puck control, but the Rangers also probably have the better horses up front. Little difference here and there, but by and large, very similar teams. As such, the Rangers definitely earned their win tonight, going toe-to-toe with a damn good team, and coming up with an extra time win. It was just a fun game to watch, though it was slightly marred by the flagrant, and exceptionally dangerous check that Ference threw on Ryan McDonagh. The Rangers can only pray that the wonder-kid is doing ok. Rangers can’t afford to have a guy like that go out for any long stretch. This team is built on their defense.

Henrik Lundqvist was outstanding tonight, but, you’d also have to say, he was very lucky as well. So many times he was caught in super-scramble mode only to be totally bailed out by his defense, the post, a body in front, or the puck just being shot high or wide. I’m not used to seeing Henrik in such a scramble mode. The guy is usually outstanding at keeping his cool in the net, not over committing to anything and just being a calming factor in general. Kinda got the feeling his juices were flowing just a bit more than usual. Can’t blame him, this was a huge game, a huge win, and a step in the right direction.

Some food for thought… The Rangers are now 7-2 against the Broooooins over the past 2+ years. Henrik Lundqvist is an unreal 17-5-2 with a GAA of 1.51 (stats courtesy of the HFBoards users, surf and pld459666). I knew the record of the teams over the past 2 years was that, but wow, look at Henriks numbers…those are SICK.

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I don’t think the score was a far characterization of how this game was played. To be totally frank, I thought for the bulk of this game the Rangers played the Pens fairly evenly. I don’t think this was the case of 1 team blowing the doors off the other. The score was, after all, tied going into the 3rd period.

The difference in this game, to me, was the Rangers were unable to take advantage of the Penguins mistakes. They were a hair off. They got a turnover, but missed the shot wide. They forced an errant pass, but decided to change instead of going for it (probably a safe, smart thing to do, to be fair). The Pens on the other hand seemed to capitalize on every Rangers mistake. If it wasn’t in the back of the net, it was a high quality scoring chance. The Pens looked to execute an offensive gameplan better than the Rangers did.

A huge reason why? Brad Richards. He’s not been good of late. Dare I say, he’s been borderline terrible. Not going to get down on the guy because I think part of the reason he is struggling is because the players around him are struggling as well, but Richards needs to be a lot better. We know he can produce, he has since he got here, but a long dry spell. 0 points in his last 6 games. Held scoreless in 11 out of his last 15 games. It’s just not enough. He’s getting power play time. He’s getting even strength time. He’s just…not….producing. Think it’s a coincidence the Rangers are on a rollercoaster ride of late? None of their big guns are going. I just mentioned Richards’ cold streak, how about Gaborik? In his last 11 games he has 1 goal and 3 assists, and those assists are only in the past 3 games, 2 of which were losses. Gabby needs to play a lot better, and Richards needs to play a lot better. Your best players have to be your best players. Sure, sometimes you need your role players to step up. That’s what they’ve done. The Rangers are on a seesaw ride right now because their role players are getting them some wins, but if they want to go from weeblewobble to a winning streak, they need Gabby and Richards to be a whole hell of a lot better than they have been.

It also seems the Tortorella has lost all faith in Stu Bickels ability, though to be honest I think he’s played probably better than Marc Staal, who has been uneven since coming back from his injury. Looking equal parts great as he has looked awful. Stralman too has seen some ice time taken away from him, probably unfairly as well. The Rangers like to ride their horses, and it looks like we know who those horses are.

On a side note Michael Del Zotto has only been a (+) players once in his last 11 games. He’s been a -5 during that time period. Not good for a guy that has been a big time plus player for the Rangers. It’s not his defensive play that seems to have slipped, it’s his offensive play. I wonder if it has something to do with the Rangers big guns being silent. Is it all feeding into each other? Del Zottos play slips because Gabby and Richards play slips…or is it maybe the other way around? Or is it a killer circle? Will be interesting to see how, and when the Rangers snap outta this funk.

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A friend of mine started up this directory where you can list companies, blogs, etc for free as long as they are products or services or whatever that are made in the USA. I listed my site for free, you can too, there’s a contact us page if the category you want to list your site/blog/whatever isn’t there yet. Thought I’d share it & help a buddy out.

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Even without all-star Ryan Suter, the Predators are a damn good team. A team with balanced scoring. A hard working team. A team with another superstar defenseman in Shea Weber, and a team with good speed, and an outstanding coach. The Predators are very similar to the New York Rangers…without the budget. That budget, though, did not really help the Rangers at all, as the Rangers got their goal scoring from an undrafted free agent signing, a my garbage for your garbage type trade, and a 4th round draft pick. No huge signings there. Just guys you get through smart scouting, and patience. John Mitchell won’t be winning you many games with his skill, but he’s a good foot soldier. Dan Girardi has risen from nobody to all-star with this organization, and of course you have Ryan Callahan going from a too small to play in the NHL draft pick, to being the captain of an original 6 franchise. Pretty strange the way this game works aye?

For all that though, the Rangers didn’t really play a great game. They didn’t have that dominating type effort that they had against the Toronto Maple Leafs a few days ago. What they did was to play well enough to win. They got some lucky goals, they got the usual elite goaltending we see from Henrik Lundqvist in pretty much any game not in Montreal, and the Rangers got themselves the NHL leading 61st and 62nd points. They halted a losing streak at 1 (can you have a 1 game losing streak? I guess not…) and they hopefully started up another winning streak.

On a side note, I wonder if Artem Anisimov is injured. He just looks very off the past 10-12 games. Something isn’t right there. Usually Arty does something excellent every game. Offensively, defensively, he usually do something right, but the last while here he’s just been wrong. Kinda like Dubinsky was before he started to get hot. Hopefully it’s just a cold streak and he straightens it out, if it is an injury, I hope he does the right thing and takes a few games off to get himself healthy.

Finally, it appears as if Michael Sauer and Steve Eminger could be coming back in a matter of a few weeks. This bodes very well for the Rangers as Bickel has quickly lost some favor with Torts (for good reason) and Anton Stralman seems to be as apt to put up a great game as he is to put up an absolute clunker. Get both those guys in, and you have a top 6 that can go head to head with any D in the NHL.

That’s all for now!

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Rangers don’t win in Montreal. Period. Anyone who is shocked we lost should have their head examined. We don’t win in Montreal. WE DON’T WIN IN MONTREAL. Rangers should just concede these 2 games every year and not even make the trip.

That’s all I’m going to say on this game. Honestly, I probably should have just written this one before the game and skipped it altogether. These games are just never worth watching. The house of horrors, the kyrptonite, the whatever you want to call it, that building just kills this team. You could assemble the greatest talent in the history of the game, put them in Rangers jerseys, and then put a bunch of newborn babies in Habs jerseys and play them against each other, and somehow the babies would still win. I don’t know how it happens. I can’t explain it. It is what it is, don’t make this game anything more than that.

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What makes a good team a great team? It’s not just about having multiple extended winning streaks. That’s important for sure, but it’s not the most important thing. To me, the most important thing is to minimize losing streaks. You are going to lose. The Russians lost to a bunch of kids from Minnesota and Wisconsin in 1980, any team can lose on any given day. What separates the pretenders from the contenders are the ability to stop losing streaks in their tracks right away. You don’t allow 1 loss to balloon into 4, 5, 6, 7 losses in a row. Or else it takes a Herculean effort to right that wrong. A 5 game win streak followed by a 5 game losing streak is still just .500 hockey after all.

That’s the most impressive thing about this team, and really, if not for a nightmare travel schedule to star the season the may have had an even better record than what they have now. Who gets the credit? The same guy I semi-ripped into in my last writeup. Coach Torts. I knew he would right the ship, and right it he did. The Rangers didn’t play a strong offensive game tonight, but really, they aren’t a strong offensive team. What they did was shut down one of the best 1-2 punches in the NHL in Lupul and Kessel who didn’t look at all like the dominating players they seemed in MSG the first 2 meetings, and they took the body at every juncture. They got hit, sure. AA was leveled more times than we can count, but they gave back everything they took in spades. When they got hit, they got up, dusted themselves off, and threw hits themselves. That’s Tortorella hockey folks. Consistent, hard working, smart, simple, cohesive, disciplined. Love it.

This game did showcase why Wojtek Wolski should be in the lineup over a guy like Mitchell. The guy has skill. Tremendous skill. Playing Mitchell on that top line, to me, makes no sense. That’s where Wolski should be. But, how can you argue with a guy who has one of the more pedestrian teams talent wise at the top of the NHL?

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I respect John Tortorella. Been a fan of his before he joined our team, and an even bigger fan of his now that he is the coach of our team. But I respectfully disagree with not only the way he coached this game, but in his post game comments. He thought the third line was his best line, yet they were on for all 3 goals against. He said AA is missing “everything” from his game right now, yet he has nearly double the points of any of the 3rd line players. Has AA been struggling a bit as of late? Sure. That’s as much his fault as it is Derek Stepans fault who hasn’t been playing all that well either. The fact of the matter is, I think Torts started to meddle with the lines when that really didn’t need to happen. The Rangers dominated the first period, and played a pretty even 2nd period. It wasn’t until Torts started screwing with all the lines that the momentum really shifted in their direction. I just didn’t see the need for it. I think we praise Torts a lot for being proactive with stuff, but it’s not as if the Senators were just overwhelming us with pressure and Henrik was a one man gang back there. No, the fact is, We probably should have been leading this game till Torts started to play musical chairs with the lines. I really think this is a game that Torts lost for us. Both with his line meddling, and with his overuse of the 3rd line. Just because they kept the puck in the opposing zone for long periods of time doesn’t mean they played a great game. They were all minuses across the board. Brian Boyle couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn right now. I think THAT is the line that needed a little tinkering. Get someone who can finish on that line. Maybe put Richards between the other 2 for a few shifts just to see how he does there. Carl Hagelin was carrying that line anyway. His speed and his board play are superb, he works so hard, and outmuscles guys who physically dominate the 6’7″ center on that line.

This game isn’t going to change my opinion of the coach 1 iota. I still think he’s one of, if not the best coach in the NHL. I still believe in his philosophy, and trust him completely. But tonight, I think he screwed up.

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