One other note, I don’t think I’ve seen Tortorella act that happy on a goal ever behind the Ranger bench, but when Drury scored, he acted as if his job was just saved.  Let’s be clear, I’m not sold that just because they have crept to within 3 points of the 8th spot, they still have a couple of teams to jump over and not many games left.  They still have 5 games left on this road trip starting with a game in Toronto on Saturday and then to the Mausoleum for a game against the Isles on Tuesday.  With 8 games to go, it’s gonna be a tough task for them, but hey you never know with the way things go in the league.

Anyway, thats pretty much it for the time being.

Until next time,

Howie

I have finally reached the end with this team for the season and I have to say it has taken a long time for me to finally give up on them.  I tried to believe that they could be a decent team but it never materialized for long stretches as they simply played way too many mediocre games all year.  I have been a fan for 35+ years and this is probably one of the worst teams I have ever watched whether live at the Garden or on TV and all the Olympic Break did was prolong the inevitable for this train wreck of a team.

I have no oomph left and unfortunately will watch the rest of this horror show as to give opinions on who should stay or who should go.  First to go in my opinion should be Sather – the author of this disaster and maybe he should take Torts with him.  The players need to be auditioning for their own jobs next season as I can see some of them not here in October.

I have nothing else to say at this point as I have run out of bad stuff to talk about other than that their next game is up in Boston on Sunday on NBC in which both teams will probably put the fans to sleep both in the arena and on TV.

Until next time,

Howie

Horace Greeley, a pretty good newspaperman, lifted (and changed) that quote and wound up getting credit for it down through the ages. He founded and ran the New York Tribune more than two centuries ago. The Trib was a thoughtful, temperate Whig mouthpiece, much respected by the nation’s intelligentsia.

Not the kind of place which would willingly house Larry Brooks.

Luckily, the New York Post is more than happy to publish the Dean of Ranger beat writers, whose words were burned into the team’s retinas as they lifted off:

“These are the Rangers, exposed as too small, too passive, too deficient in talent, too uptight, playing uninspired hockey while looking for a way out of New York as if their myriad problems won’t accompany the team on the three-game (western) trip…..”

The Escape From New York came just ahead of the long-suffering fans storming the Garden with torches, pitchforks and clubs.

In New York, “fan” has become a synonym for “chump,” which includes yours truly. This became crystal clear after watching the Rangers lose to the Carolina Hurricanes Wednesday night. For dessert, we heard John Tortorella talk about “all of the stuff around us,” and the need to get out of town. And we saw Henrik Lundqvist look more and more like he’s spiralling into a major depression.

I chumpishly watched this dreadful performance by the Rangers, owned by the Dolans. I watched on Cablevision, owned by the Dolans. Tuned to MSG Network, owned by the Dolans.

There truly is no way out. And if I feel trapped, how about the poor sods who actually pay to attend these games?

We’re all filling Cablevision’s pockets, night-in, night-out, and frankly, we’re not getting a hell of a lot in return.

[Perhaps the lone bright spot emerging from Cablevision hegemony is the coverage of Newsday’s Steve Zipay, who is actually with the team on its west coast trip. He gets to fly around with them, I’m theorizing, because Cablevision bought his newspaper (Newsday) a little while ago. Wouldn’t do to treat Zipay like the rest of the local hockey writers, who cover away games via TV or Amtrak.]

Maybe a three game west coast trip will help. Maybe they’ll get five or six points and come home triumphant. Maybe they’ll play miserably and skulk home hoping nobody noticed.

Whatever happens out west, I hope they decide to scratch and claw when they return. The two week period before the Olympics will be separation time, when the many teams bunched around the final few playoff spots in the East will start to move up….or down.

Perhaps a screening of Escape From New York on the team plane is called for. Snake Plisken had a really hard time in Manhattan, you’ll recall. But he was a tough guy, good with his fists, his wits and any variety of weapons and ultimately prevailed. I can only wish the same for the Rangers. Eye patches all around.

Update:  The intrepid Andrew Gross, long-time Rangers beat man is also flying to Phoenix, he tweets.  Andrew currently works for whatever they’re calling the Bergen Record these days.

Not just that, but a fair amount of distress is generated when the ogre Carcillo goes after Marian Gaborik, who gamely fights his own fight while the rest of the on-ice Rangers glance anxiously at each other, wondering if it’s worth a third man in.

Most stories, bad and good, have arcs. This ten day odyssey ended where it started – at zero. On Tuesday January 12th, Ranger fans endured a Brodeur shutout but were treated to one of the best games of the season. Less pleasant was a 2-0 hiccup versus the Senators, followed by a 4-1 loss to the Blues.

Then, the Canadiens visited on the 17th, got two goals and gave up six. This was the return of Scott Gomez to MSG. $Million-a-goal Scott was the smirking, self-satisfied frat boy we all recall so fondly.

I easily remembered why I don’t miss him. John Giannone practically told him the same during an interview; I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

Anyway, a nice win there.

Tampa Bay arrives two nights later and plays miserably, allowing eight goals to the Rangers.

Fourteen goals over two games? That’s almost a season’s worth on 7th avenue. The apex, the very peak of our 10-day arc. Don’t waste them, boys, please; you might need them against the Flyers on Thursday……

Ah well. Goals aren’t transferable between games, apparently.

In any event, the real highlight of Thursday night was the post-game hissing match between John Tortorella and Larry Brooks of the New York Post. Each seems to have a gift for annoying the other. I was a little surprised at how well-modulated the voices were; not a lot of shouting. Brooks was wondering out loud if Torotorella thought he represented New York well (not sure what prompted that line of questioning). Tortorella went after Brooks for his Wade “Gold Gloves” Redden crack in a previous article (which I thought was sort of funny). If I were Rangers management, I’d tacitly encourage one of these encounters every two weeks or so, especially after a loss. Keeps the punters tuned in.

So the caravan rolls on to Bell Centre for a Saturday night rematch against Montreal. The start of a new arc. We sit here at zero goals and a difficult loss last night, hoping Saturday brings a thunderclap of energy and hope. There’s been too much flat-lining around here lately.

The team has no guts whatsoever and showed zip out there tonight, mistakes all over the place and no hustle at all for the majority of the evening.  News flash to the players, just putting on the uniform and showing up on the ice is not enough, you need to actually play the game with effort, which was absent tonight.  I wish that the fans could have been given their money back since the team should not get paid at all for that crappy effort.  If I went out at my job and performed like that, I would lose my job, but these guys never do.  I now know that things need to change in a hurry before any chance at a playoff spot disappears on them, which at this point I think will happen. 

The team needs to stop relying on the big 3 (Gaborik, Prospal, Lundqvist) and pick up the slack through other players (ha ha).  I’m not sure about how they are going to play the next bunch of games and at this point, they continue to throw away points in the standings and fall further behind in doing so.  Their next game is tomorrow in Raleigh to face off vs. the Canes, but I’m skeptical at best.

I have nothing left to say so I will stop now.

Until the next frustrating game,

Your aggravated NYR blogger

Howie

The bright spots tonight were that there were goals from Gaborik (SH), Prospal with 2 goals (broke a 14 game drought), and Drury who scored his 3^rd goal in 4 games and looks like he has come out of his funk.  This also was their first home win in a month, which shows you how bad it’s been at the Garden lately, maybe this will help them to play better at home going forward since they need the home cooking in order to get on a huge streak.  The other key at home tonight was that they had the crowd in the game all night long which gives the players extra confidence out on the ice to perform a little harder. 

It’s also nice to see the Rangers show some edge to their game this evening as well as Avery having returned to his annoying style of play and Callahan showed a ton of hustle all over the ice.  In addition, they played as a team again defensively and limited the Panthers for a lot of the night despite them having 4 power plays to work with.  This style of play can go a long way to them continuing to climb up the ladder and hey even some secondary scoring is beginning to appear as well.  The secondary scoring is important because without it, there is no way they could even stay in the hunt for a playoff spot. 

I now believe that whatever Torts is preaching in the locker room and practices is beginning to sink in during games as I haven’t seen them play this well since early October.  This is the time to pick up points as they are playing teams that are behind them in the standings and they should not throw away these potential points as they have over the long slump that looks like they are now out of.  If they lose to the teams ahead of them, that’s not a good thing, but is understandable if it happens, but losing to the league bottom feeders is a sure way to miss the postseason.

Anyway, their next game is at MSG on Saturday evening where they will face the Islanders and the reeling Flyers on the 30th before they head back out on the road on New Year’s Eve to face the Hurricanes after which they come home for another 3 game home stand on January 2nd to begin the 2010 portion of the schedule which leads up to the Olympic break in mid February.

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well folks, that’s it till Saturday night.

Your NYR blogger,

Howie

What I’m hoping is that maybe this team can build off of these 2 wins and continue to climb up the standings and that they play as a team like they have in these last couple after the disaster at MSG on Wednesday evening.  The team most certainly looked like they actually cared about winning in these last 2 and if they can carry that attitude over from game to game, they might actually still have some hope yet this year.  Other than that, there’s nothing else to talk about today related to today’s game.

Their next game is in Carolina on Monday evening where they will face the worst team in the league followed by another 3 game home stand.  As I have said before, I still want to reinforce that these games are important and the continued need to pick up some points is vital if they want to remain in the playoff race.

Well folks, that’s it till next time.

Your NYR blogger,

Howie

One huge thing that Tortorella did was to sit a couple of veterans who were not playing well after last night’s game and they were Redden and Kotalik.  Hopefully watching the game from the press box sent a message that the coach is no longer tolerating lousy play from any of his players.

Lundqvist played extremely well as he made some great saves tonight and was the best player on the team in last night’s debacle at MSG.  The bright spots tonight were that the power play scored three times with Gaborik on a 5 on 3 and Callahan tallying twice, there was a Drury sighting as he scored his first goal in what seemed like ages (20 games) and Anisimov tallied on a beautiful move.  One huge moment came in the 3^rd when they were short handed for 4 minutes and played well not allowing the Isles anything.

What I hope is that maybe this team can build off of this win and maybe start a vertical climb up the standings and that they can finally put the puck in the net on a more regular basis.  I’m still not letting Sather off the hook though; he still is responsible for the team that is on the ice that for the most part has been awful a lot of nights with Wednesday’s game being true rock bottom. 

I know I’m going back and forth between games, but I had to get the point across that after the disaster against the Isles on Wednesday at MSG, I wanted to talk about the effects of what a team meeting and being lambasted by the coach can do for a team.

Their next game is Saturday afternoon in Philly where they will face a reeling Flyer team and then they are off to Carolina on Monday evening where they will face the worst team in the league.  Once again, I just want to reinforce that these games are vital and they need to pick up some points soon before the playoff train leaves them in the dust.

Well folks, that’s it till next time.

Your NYR blogger,

Howie