So the rapidly-plummeting Rangers beat the stagnantly-shitty Islanders 5-2 last night. And it was exciting, because we scored goals, and we got to cheer for those goals, and we won a game, and now there are a full four teams in the NHL with fewer points than we have.
And honestly, the game did have a different feel to it. Sure, they outshot us every period, including 14-4 in the first, but we came out of it up 2-0 regardless, and ultimately put our greasy rivals away. Small hoorays. It's a start.
We all know the important question is "Where do we go from here?" As Lundqvist put it, "It's hard to be satisfied" after this win. We know it's only one victory over a team as scrubby as ourselves, on the tail of a series of terrible games. What we need to talk about, well before we talk about turning anything around, is how to sustain and increase this kind of performance.
So, going into last night, Torts scratched Kotalik and Redden. This was absolutely a step in the right direction. The official lines he sent out were also interesting, bringing Christensen up onto the second line and shifting Drury down to the fourth (Lisin got the promotion up to Kotalik's spot, and Boyle was pushed out to wing on the fourth line). Meanwhile, Staal/Rozsival and Del Zotto/Girardi stayed together, leaving Heikkinen/Sanguinetti as the third pair.
Largely, that lineup is full of good signs. It means Torts doesn't fall victim to the Renneyitis of "if I'm gonna change the lineup at all, I might as well change all the lines!" It also means that scratching Redden wasn't a way to say "I only trust four defensemen." And the ice time kinda supported that: Sanguinetti, in his first game, only skated 8:46, but Heikkinen, who put in a much stronger effort, saw the ice for 12:35, still 10 minutes less than the other D-men, but a marked improvement, especially considering that it included 1:43 of shorthanded time.
Forward time was also more balanced (though not quite as balanced as it has to be). Donald "Haha suckers you're still paying me $1.4 million dollars! That's $7,527 a day!!" Brashear only got 4:36, but that's fine, because he is completely useless. That said, the theoretical move of Drury down to the 4th line balanced ice time out a bit, so he got about 15 minutes, Christensen got about 10, and Avery, Gaborik, Dubi, Prospal, Higgins, Drury, and Callahan each ranged between 12 and 22 minutes. I'd like to see more of that go to Avery (12:18), and I'd like to see Anisimov out there some more (did you see what he did for our fifth goal?), but it's a start.
And that's the theme, isn't it? "It's a start." The comforting things, once again, are the things coming out of the coach's mouth. Redden passed of his benching as "making an example" of him, which is insane. Torts responded with no illusions:
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This isn't to make an example out of Wade Redden, Wade Redden hasn't played well enough to be in the lineup. I'm not interested in making examples out of people. A coach's responsibility is to put the best lineup on the ice. I felt I did that last night. It will be the same lineup going into Philly. For 25 to 30 games, we tried to stay with him, we tried to bring confidence in with him and go about it that way, and it hasn't worked. It's still trying to gain confidence, but there's going to be no entitlement around here. I think it kind of stinks of that around here. We've got kids, and this coaching staff and manager want to infuse some kids into our lineup because we feel that's going to be the best way to build it. We'll go through some bumps in the road with kids, but not with underachieving veterans. I just don't buy it and it's not going to work that way.
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Preach it, John. The question that remains is how far we'll go with that. Sounds like we'll be keeping last night's lineup for tomorrow, which is a start. But we need more. Will Michal Rozsival, clearly kept around for his offensive mediocrity and not his defensive liability, keep seeing PP time but a decreased responsibility on ice? Will Girardi, who has absolutely been our best defenseman through this stretch, and who put on another fantastic show last night, see a corresponding increase? Will Anisimov and the like keep getting the chance to do what he did last night? When Redden gets his chance to come back, who sits, and for how long?
These are the questions that tomorrow afternoon's game in Philly will begin to answer. But hey - it's a start.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tonight's lineup
Well, it's a start. I'm concerned that it takes this much shitty play to create one benching, but Torts is actually sitting Wade Redden (who last night turned in a performance that would have fit right in with his play last season), along with Ales Kotalik tonight. Bobby Sanguinetti is in for the former, Erik Christensen for the latter. Aaron Voros could not be reached for comment in the secret space bunker where John Tortorella clearly has him held against his will. Also, Lundqvist will be playing again, God bless him.
Islanders 2, Rangers 1
I was going to talk a lot today but I was basically just going to write this column, so go read that instead: it'll save us both some time.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
OK, that's sort of what I meant
So, first of all, a slight retraction: when Dubinsky was recalled to play against the Thrashers, we apparently sent Parenteau back down to make room for him. So, only two of those extra roster slots were spare fourth-liners (Voros and Christensen, if you believe that game's lineup). The third is now full of: Bobby Sanguinetti! That's right, in a shockingly reasonable move, the Rangers recalled Sanguinetti from the 'Pack today. Effectively, I expect this to be meaningless: Sanguinetti will likely be a healthy scratch tonight, and I can't see why I should expect Heikkinen to get more than 10 minutes (unless we're losing so badly so early that Torts doesn't care). But, hey, we're officially carrying 7 defensemen right now. Woot woot.
For those of you keeping score, the reason we're able to do this is that when we sent Gilroy down for better training, his $1.75 million cap hit went with him. This 23-man roster has a total cap hit of $56,631,666, an astonishing $168,334 under the cap. The official hockey term for that is "cutting it close." When Gilroy comes back, keep those numbers in mind.
I think we have a roster that can beat the Islanders tonight and/or tomorrow night, especially if we remember to use all our players. But we also could have beaten the Thrashers two nights ago. What I do know is that right now, the Rangers, Islanders, and Flyers are all tied in points, with 31 each. That makes the next four days very interesting for us.
7:00 at the Garden, Let's Go Rangers!
For those of you keeping score, the reason we're able to do this is that when we sent Gilroy down for better training, his $1.75 million cap hit went with him. This 23-man roster has a total cap hit of $56,631,666, an astonishing $168,334 under the cap. The official hockey term for that is "cutting it close." When Gilroy comes back, keep those numbers in mind.
I think we have a roster that can beat the Islanders tonight and/or tomorrow night, especially if we remember to use all our players. But we also could have beaten the Thrashers two nights ago. What I do know is that right now, the Rangers, Islanders, and Flyers are all tied in points, with 31 each. That makes the next four days very interesting for us.
7:00 at the Garden, Let's Go Rangers!
"There are good things we can take away from this"
We hear it a lot, only it was actually true two nights ago. Two nights ago, we outshot the Thrashers 48-27 and outplayed them for most of the game. It took a shootout (the poster child of the NHL's refusal to allow hockey in their hockey games) for the Thrashers to steal a second point from us (yes, it feels as good as you think it does to say that). Let me be clear about something: this is bullshit. To look at the game and take away "well, Gaborik needs to be better in the shootout" is like being one of those people who thinks all the big wars this century could have been prevented if only Archduke Franz Ferdinand hadn't gone out in Sarajevo that day. Pragmatically, we would have taken away another point had we performed better in the shootout, but wow are you ever missing the point.
Sorry, that's kind of a bullshit analogy to whip out. Let's move on.
So, yes, there were good things to take away from the game. We certainly dominated most of play. We just couldn't seal the deal. "Stuck at two" is now the common mantra. We're stuck at two goals a game. Since November 12 (November 12, people), we beat the Jackets 7-4 that one time, and other than that, we've only scored over 2 goals in a game one time, when we scored 3 and gave up 8 to Pittsburgh. In our best effort in weeks, we proved we can outplay a team top to bottom, but we still can't seal the deal. Does this sound familiar?
There were good things to take away from the game. We worked hard on 5 consecutive power plays, putting 13 PP shots on net and scoring two PPG. We killed off two late third period minors which overlapped for 1:26 to keep the game tied, and we got a lot of excellent chances in overtime. But we didn't capitalize on a third power play, or score an even strength goal, or match the Thrashers' shorthanded tally, to turn that puck possession advantage into a win.
At even strength, there were also good things to take away. We outshot them 34-19 in 48:41 of 5-on-5 hockey. We even stood up for ourselves a bunch. But, zero of those 34 shots (some of which were admittedly of good quality) made their way past "Moose" and across that elusive red line. Let's be clear about even strength hockey here for a minute. Since losing 8-3 to the Penguins on November 28, we have scored a total of five even strength goals. All of these but Callahan's goal against the Sabres were first period goals. And other than that Sabres game, we haven't scored two even strength goals in the same game in that stretch.
Brandon Dubinsky was back, and he brought some good take-aways. He was a lot of the reason we played so hard. But let's not pretend he, or anyone else not named Marian, is scoring the difference-makers. The Rangers have scored 88 goals this season, putting them tied for 23rd in a league of 30. Without Gaborik's league-leading 23 goals, we'd be at 65, dead last in the league and 13 goals behind our closest competition.
So, maybe there are also some bad things to take away from our situation. We're down to 1-5-2 in our last eight now, and 7-14-3 since we opened the season 7-1. Only one team in the league, the dreadful 7-19-6 Carolina Hurricanes, has fewer points than we do.
And our personnel movement is...curious, at best. When Tortorella said he was a guy that believed firmly in leaning on his top guys, I said I didn't love it. I prefer a style that rolls 4 lines. But I never thought he'd mean it this extremely. According to Larry Brooks (I haven't bothered verifying the calculation, but it certainly seems right), our top six (Higgins, Dubi, Gaborik, Prospal, Drury, Cally) combined for 75.3% of total ice time for forwards. Over three quarters of the game. The other two lines combined for less than a quarter of the game. I'm excited about a few weeks from now, when he's pointing at the low numbers all the other guys have as a reason for keeping them off the ice.
Look, I'm under no illusions about Erik Christensen being the savior here. But you need to give some of these other guys a chance. Assuming Anisimov and Avery are mainstays on the third line (which seems to be the case), we are currently carrying Boyle, Brashear, Christensen, Kotalik, Lisin, Parenteau, and Voros -- seven forwards -- to fill those last four slots, to get a combined 24 minutes a game. You have to assume at least a couple of those guys are going to have some skill, right?
I mean, you'd better. Even if we take Kotalik out of the picture as a semi-permanent third-line winger, we have 6 men whose salaries total $5,065,000 under the cap rotating to play on the fourth line, which sees less than 5 minutes a game. Hey, I'm no coach, but maybe if you played these guys a little more, you could see which ones were in any way worthwhile, and then maybe you wouldn't have to keep this many on the roster?
The thinking is somehow similar with our defensemen. Michal Rozsival is a defensive abomination. Whatever slight offensive threat he adds is more than accounted for by his total lack of liability for covering anyone defensively, ever. And yet, he's one of Torts's "top guys." So, he saw 25:39 last night, only 6 seconds less than team leader Marc Staal. Meanwhile, Ilkka Heikkinen saw only 7:24 of ice time (the other 5 D-men averaged 22:59).
Look, the theme here has consistently been to take the path of least resistance. We send down the young people that don't have to clear waivers instead of the old ones that deserve it. It's why Donald Brashear, who has not done anything dynamic for the Rangers since he broke Blair Betts's face, and Michal Rozsival keep finding their way into the lineup, Voros never gets to dress but stays on the roster, and Heikkinen and Sangunetti play ping-pong with the Wolfpack.
And I don't hate that idea: it's a lot easier to make moves with your AHL affiliate when you don't have to play the waivers game all the time. It's not unreasonable to assume that if we tried to assign Rozsival to the Wolfpack, some team with a solid D-line and some cap room would pick him up on waivers, knowing they'd only have to pay $2.5 million a year for him for the next two and a half seasons, leaving us burdened with an identical amount under the cap going literally nowhere. I understand the desire to keep him on the Rangers roster for now and hope for a trade.
But there are options here. There are things we can do that aren't this. Did you know, for example, that many NHL teams carry more than the bare minimum of defensemen on their rosters? The official roster size cap is 23, and 20 dress each night. Many teams don't use all three of those extra spots for 4th-liners who never rotate in.
Here's what I'm saying: leave Gilroy in Hartford, improving his game. Whenever he and Messier decide he's ready to come back, bring him back. Leave Heikkinen in the lineup. Send down whatever never-played forwards you need to be able to afford this under the cap. Rotate our defensemen. Rozsival doesn't run the risk of being picked up on waivers if he sits for a night but stays on the roster. You know, like Aaron Voros. Remember him? Why aren't we doing that to Rozsival?
And this brings me to the bad thing we can take away from the Thrashers game. Ice time. If we were at all interested in doing what I suggest, in sending some 4th-liners to Hartford and rotating 7 guys, it would show in the ice time these six are receiving. Instead, I see a pattern that absolutely says "these are the five defensemen that matter right now." That doesn't mean "I know Rozsival has some issue, but we can't send him to Hartford, so we're working through it." It says "these are my five best defensemen, period."
Starting tonight, we have a home-and-home against the Islanders in consecutive nights, followed by one night off, and then a 1:00 game in Philadelphia. Anyone know how we plan to handle that with only 6 forwards and 5 defensemen?
Sorry, that's kind of a bullshit analogy to whip out. Let's move on.
So, yes, there were good things to take away from the game. We certainly dominated most of play. We just couldn't seal the deal. "Stuck at two" is now the common mantra. We're stuck at two goals a game. Since November 12 (November 12, people), we beat the Jackets 7-4 that one time, and other than that, we've only scored over 2 goals in a game one time, when we scored 3 and gave up 8 to Pittsburgh. In our best effort in weeks, we proved we can outplay a team top to bottom, but we still can't seal the deal. Does this sound familiar?
There were good things to take away from the game. We worked hard on 5 consecutive power plays, putting 13 PP shots on net and scoring two PPG. We killed off two late third period minors which overlapped for 1:26 to keep the game tied, and we got a lot of excellent chances in overtime. But we didn't capitalize on a third power play, or score an even strength goal, or match the Thrashers' shorthanded tally, to turn that puck possession advantage into a win.
At even strength, there were also good things to take away. We outshot them 34-19 in 48:41 of 5-on-5 hockey. We even stood up for ourselves a bunch. But, zero of those 34 shots (some of which were admittedly of good quality) made their way past "Moose" and across that elusive red line. Let's be clear about even strength hockey here for a minute. Since losing 8-3 to the Penguins on November 28, we have scored a total of five even strength goals. All of these but Callahan's goal against the Sabres were first period goals. And other than that Sabres game, we haven't scored two even strength goals in the same game in that stretch.
Brandon Dubinsky was back, and he brought some good take-aways. He was a lot of the reason we played so hard. But let's not pretend he, or anyone else not named Marian, is scoring the difference-makers. The Rangers have scored 88 goals this season, putting them tied for 23rd in a league of 30. Without Gaborik's league-leading 23 goals, we'd be at 65, dead last in the league and 13 goals behind our closest competition.
So, maybe there are also some bad things to take away from our situation. We're down to 1-5-2 in our last eight now, and 7-14-3 since we opened the season 7-1. Only one team in the league, the dreadful 7-19-6 Carolina Hurricanes, has fewer points than we do.
And our personnel movement is...curious, at best. When Tortorella said he was a guy that believed firmly in leaning on his top guys, I said I didn't love it. I prefer a style that rolls 4 lines. But I never thought he'd mean it this extremely. According to Larry Brooks (I haven't bothered verifying the calculation, but it certainly seems right), our top six (Higgins, Dubi, Gaborik, Prospal, Drury, Cally) combined for 75.3% of total ice time for forwards. Over three quarters of the game. The other two lines combined for less than a quarter of the game. I'm excited about a few weeks from now, when he's pointing at the low numbers all the other guys have as a reason for keeping them off the ice.
Look, I'm under no illusions about Erik Christensen being the savior here. But you need to give some of these other guys a chance. Assuming Anisimov and Avery are mainstays on the third line (which seems to be the case), we are currently carrying Boyle, Brashear, Christensen, Kotalik, Lisin, Parenteau, and Voros -- seven forwards -- to fill those last four slots, to get a combined 24 minutes a game. You have to assume at least a couple of those guys are going to have some skill, right?
I mean, you'd better. Even if we take Kotalik out of the picture as a semi-permanent third-line winger, we have 6 men whose salaries total $5,065,000 under the cap rotating to play on the fourth line, which sees less than 5 minutes a game. Hey, I'm no coach, but maybe if you played these guys a little more, you could see which ones were in any way worthwhile, and then maybe you wouldn't have to keep this many on the roster?
The thinking is somehow similar with our defensemen. Michal Rozsival is a defensive abomination. Whatever slight offensive threat he adds is more than accounted for by his total lack of liability for covering anyone defensively, ever. And yet, he's one of Torts's "top guys." So, he saw 25:39 last night, only 6 seconds less than team leader Marc Staal. Meanwhile, Ilkka Heikkinen saw only 7:24 of ice time (the other 5 D-men averaged 22:59).
Look, the theme here has consistently been to take the path of least resistance. We send down the young people that don't have to clear waivers instead of the old ones that deserve it. It's why Donald Brashear, who has not done anything dynamic for the Rangers since he broke Blair Betts's face, and Michal Rozsival keep finding their way into the lineup, Voros never gets to dress but stays on the roster, and Heikkinen and Sangunetti play ping-pong with the Wolfpack.
And I don't hate that idea: it's a lot easier to make moves with your AHL affiliate when you don't have to play the waivers game all the time. It's not unreasonable to assume that if we tried to assign Rozsival to the Wolfpack, some team with a solid D-line and some cap room would pick him up on waivers, knowing they'd only have to pay $2.5 million a year for him for the next two and a half seasons, leaving us burdened with an identical amount under the cap going literally nowhere. I understand the desire to keep him on the Rangers roster for now and hope for a trade.
But there are options here. There are things we can do that aren't this. Did you know, for example, that many NHL teams carry more than the bare minimum of defensemen on their rosters? The official roster size cap is 23, and 20 dress each night. Many teams don't use all three of those extra spots for 4th-liners who never rotate in.
Here's what I'm saying: leave Gilroy in Hartford, improving his game. Whenever he and Messier decide he's ready to come back, bring him back. Leave Heikkinen in the lineup. Send down whatever never-played forwards you need to be able to afford this under the cap. Rotate our defensemen. Rozsival doesn't run the risk of being picked up on waivers if he sits for a night but stays on the roster. You know, like Aaron Voros. Remember him? Why aren't we doing that to Rozsival?
And this brings me to the bad thing we can take away from the Thrashers game. Ice time. If we were at all interested in doing what I suggest, in sending some 4th-liners to Hartford and rotating 7 guys, it would show in the ice time these six are receiving. Instead, I see a pattern that absolutely says "these are the five defensemen that matter right now." That doesn't mean "I know Rozsival has some issue, but we can't send him to Hartford, so we're working through it." It says "these are my five best defensemen, period."
Starting tonight, we have a home-and-home against the Islanders in consecutive nights, followed by one night off, and then a 1:00 game in Philadelphia. Anyone know how we plan to handle that with only 6 forwards and 5 defensemen?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
This feels wrong
Okay, so, sure, Gilroy's game had been steadily declining. So we decided to reassign him to Hartford. If that were the whole story, it would make sense. But taken in context, given the defensemen that seem like they're allowed to play however they like with no penalty, this is weird. I don't have necessarily an issue with sending Gilroy (tied for seventh in points, tied for ninth in +/-, second overall in goals, and tied for first in shots taken among NHL rookie defensemen) down. My issue is with sending him down because of a "decline in play" while in the same breath letting absolutely everything Michal Rozsival does slide. Does Gilroy need to get better? Yes. Does Heikkinen deserve that position more than Gilroy? Possibly. Does Gilroy deserve it more than Rozsival? Definitely.
Oh, and we sent Johnson back down so he can play more, and instead brought up Matt Zaba to be Lundqvist's figurehead backup.
What. The. Butt.
Oh, and we sent Johnson back down so he can play more, and instead brought up Matt Zaba to be Lundqvist's figurehead backup.
What. The. Butt.
WTF
OK, so we just sent Gilroy to Hartford.
That wasn't exactly what I meant by defenseman accountability. Now I'm even MORE confused.
More on this when I'm not working.
That wasn't exactly what I meant by defenseman accountability. Now I'm even MORE confused.
More on this when I'm not working.
A King with No Court
So, now can everyone stop writing editorials about how the Rangers would be doing OK if Lundqvist would stop letting in a soft goal now and again?
Last night, we managed to steal a point from seemingly legitimate Cup contenders the Chicago Blackhawks before losing 2-1 in overtime. That sounds like good news, especially in light of the honestly good effort we put forward in losing to the Red Wings the other night. But, oh, wow, was this game ever not close.
Against Detroit, we battled hard against a more talented opponent and ended up tied 1-1 as late as 17:58 into the third, when Lundqvist let in a weird goal that put us down 2-1 (the Wings then scored on an empty netter enabled by a linesman who couldn't even figure out how to get out of the way of the puck keeping it in the zone and creating an artificial 3-on-1 out of a Ranger's otherwise successful clearing attempt). We had good sustained pressure from more than one line, et cetera.
Last night, Redden's "triumphant" return to the lineup, was embarrassing. Like, horrible. The Blackhawks kept the puck basically for the entire game. Seriously. After one period, we were being outshot 16-5 and somehow led 1-0. Overall, we were outshot 41-18, including mustering an intimidating 1 shot in the entire third period. You'd like to believe that, once we saw ourselves leading 1-0, we tightened up and played good, solid, neutral zone, low risk hockey to carry ourselves out of the third. You'd like to believe that that's why we only got one shot on goal in that period, and why we lasted until overtime. But this is not the case.
We only got one shot in the third because the 'Hawks had the puck the whole time. We lasted into overtime because Henrik Lundqvist gave Chicago a fucking show. This was the kind of game where each of our penalties was extended by 30 seconds of 6-on-5 at the front, because we literally couldn't touch the puck. Left out to dry time and time again throughout the game by defensemen who seemed, from their stand-still-and-gape game plan, to be as enthralled by the King's performance as I was, Hank did cartwheel after cartwheel (and I suspect magic as well) and kept everything out. But when our defensemen decided to enhance their siege of Hank's castle by taking stupid penalties (the Rangers took four minors in the final 25 minutes of play, 3 from defensemen, all 4 legitimate calls), the Blackhawks eventually capitalized.
Once it was 1-1, it was clear who had won this game (truly, from the moment Higgins scored, it was clear that 1-0 was the only score by which we had any chance of winning this game). It's only thanks to Henrik "thirty-nine fucking saves, people" Lundqvist that we had any chance at all, let alone that we made it into overtime. But, as you might imagine, we didn't build on Hank's performance to rally and play hard hockey for even a second of overtime. If we're not knocking people down for running Hank, why would we expect to show him the respect of playing good hockey for him? Inevitably, 1:17 from improbably surviving into the shootout, the unspellable Dustin Byfuglien made it official.
This was embarrassing. If nothing else, Henrik Lundqvist deserves better. "Thoroughly mediocre" is far too kind a phrase to describe this team that came out of the gate 7-1. Since then, we've gone 7-13-2, earning (if that's the right word) 16 points in 22 games. That puts us at 29th in the entire league since then (in front of only the Hurricanes, at 5-14-4).
This is the same old shit as when we were the Renney-gades. This is a team with no offense, Swiss cheese defense, and a stellar goalie stealing points in shitty efforts. Where is that patented Tortorella accountability? When are we going actually try to shake up the locker room a little (other than switching backup goalies and signing Erik Christensen)? Where's the "not afraid to sit veterans when they deserve it" that made us what to hire him? When does Michal Rozsival, who somehow managed to stand out as bad even among last night's awful impersonation of a hockey team, have to sit, even for one fucking game, even if it's just to give him the illusion that he might not be guaranteed a position every night no matter how badly he plays? Just pretend they're accountable for their play by benching them for one meaningless midseason game that we're clearly going to lose anyway! What the fuck have you got to lose? The two points separating us from 30th?
Last night, we managed to steal a point from seemingly legitimate Cup contenders the Chicago Blackhawks before losing 2-1 in overtime. That sounds like good news, especially in light of the honestly good effort we put forward in losing to the Red Wings the other night. But, oh, wow, was this game ever not close.
Against Detroit, we battled hard against a more talented opponent and ended up tied 1-1 as late as 17:58 into the third, when Lundqvist let in a weird goal that put us down 2-1 (the Wings then scored on an empty netter enabled by a linesman who couldn't even figure out how to get out of the way of the puck keeping it in the zone and creating an artificial 3-on-1 out of a Ranger's otherwise successful clearing attempt). We had good sustained pressure from more than one line, et cetera.
Last night, Redden's "triumphant" return to the lineup, was embarrassing. Like, horrible. The Blackhawks kept the puck basically for the entire game. Seriously. After one period, we were being outshot 16-5 and somehow led 1-0. Overall, we were outshot 41-18, including mustering an intimidating 1 shot in the entire third period. You'd like to believe that, once we saw ourselves leading 1-0, we tightened up and played good, solid, neutral zone, low risk hockey to carry ourselves out of the third. You'd like to believe that that's why we only got one shot on goal in that period, and why we lasted until overtime. But this is not the case.
We only got one shot in the third because the 'Hawks had the puck the whole time. We lasted into overtime because Henrik Lundqvist gave Chicago a fucking show. This was the kind of game where each of our penalties was extended by 30 seconds of 6-on-5 at the front, because we literally couldn't touch the puck. Left out to dry time and time again throughout the game by defensemen who seemed, from their stand-still-and-gape game plan, to be as enthralled by the King's performance as I was, Hank did cartwheel after cartwheel (and I suspect magic as well) and kept everything out. But when our defensemen decided to enhance their siege of Hank's castle by taking stupid penalties (the Rangers took four minors in the final 25 minutes of play, 3 from defensemen, all 4 legitimate calls), the Blackhawks eventually capitalized.
Once it was 1-1, it was clear who had won this game (truly, from the moment Higgins scored, it was clear that 1-0 was the only score by which we had any chance of winning this game). It's only thanks to Henrik "thirty-nine fucking saves, people" Lundqvist that we had any chance at all, let alone that we made it into overtime. But, as you might imagine, we didn't build on Hank's performance to rally and play hard hockey for even a second of overtime. If we're not knocking people down for running Hank, why would we expect to show him the respect of playing good hockey for him? Inevitably, 1:17 from improbably surviving into the shootout, the unspellable Dustin Byfuglien made it official.
This was embarrassing. If nothing else, Henrik Lundqvist deserves better. "Thoroughly mediocre" is far too kind a phrase to describe this team that came out of the gate 7-1. Since then, we've gone 7-13-2, earning (if that's the right word) 16 points in 22 games. That puts us at 29th in the entire league since then (in front of only the Hurricanes, at 5-14-4).
This is the same old shit as when we were the Renney-gades. This is a team with no offense, Swiss cheese defense, and a stellar goalie stealing points in shitty efforts. Where is that patented Tortorella accountability? When are we going actually try to shake up the locker room a little (other than switching backup goalies and signing Erik Christensen)? Where's the "not afraid to sit veterans when they deserve it" that made us what to hire him? When does Michal Rozsival, who somehow managed to stand out as bad even among last night's awful impersonation of a hockey team, have to sit, even for one fucking game, even if it's just to give him the illusion that he might not be guaranteed a position every night no matter how badly he plays? Just pretend they're accountable for their play by benching them for one meaningless midseason game that we're clearly going to lose anyway! What the fuck have you got to lose? The two points separating us from 30th?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
I don't get it I don't get it!
Okay, people. Get comfortable, buckle your safety belts, and load up your freedom trays. Things have happened.
First of all, Donald Brashear apparently has some undisclosed injury again. This is largely meaningless to me, as even his apparent promotion to the second line hasn't convinced him to start throwing checks. Fights, sure, just not checks. More on the difference between fighting and toughness here, in Brett Cyrgalis's lengthy but fair Post blog entry, "Rangers Just Aren't Tough Enough." So, we'll see Brashear again whenever he shakes the old back off and comes back to punch people for another 3 weeks. Yeah, we don't miss that $1.4 million a year, really.
Now, some of you may remember a center named Erik Christensen. He was Colby Armstrong's worse half, back when they got sent together from the Penguins to the Thrashers in exchange for some French guy and Marian Hossa. Since then, Armstrong has been given the A in Atlanta, and Christensen has scored 0 points in 9 games for the Ducks before being put on waivers.
Guess what? He's ours now! Picked him right up off waivers. Our woes at center are solved! Yeah. So, we'll see how that goes.
But that's not all! In a move that seemed to say "Redden will be back Saturday," we sent Sanguinetti back down to Hartford yesterday. But, as it turns out, the move actually said "we're still holding open auditions," because today, we recalled Ilkka Heikkinen. Apparently we had our three games with a defenseman who actually checks people, and so we've moved on to auditioning another "offensively-minded defenseman." Yee. Haw.
Finally, and this is the really interesting one, our beloved Stephen Valiquette has been placed on waivers. Now, let's be clear about this: he hasn't been playing fantastic hockey, this is true. The way it was presented, the Rangers wanted not to release him, but to send him down to Hartford for a conditioning stint, but our cap woes prevented us from doing so. Before we dive into those, let's clarify what that means.
The supposed preferred option was to keep Lundqvist on the Rangers' roster. We could then send him to Hartford for conditioning, to give him more ice time, call up another backup goalie, and bring Valli back when he's ready. But, staying on the roster would mean he is still a Ranger, so his $725,000 continues to count against our cap, in addition to whatever we're paying the new goalie we call up. So, instead we placed him on waivers. The good news is that this makes him a Wolf (Wolfpacker?), not a Ranger, so he doesn't count against the cap. The bad news is he has to clear waivers, which means other teams have a chance at claiming him. So, that's why we had to do this: cause we don't have the $725,000 to kill under the cap.
And, it looks like we got lucky, and he cleared. So, welcome to the New York Rangers, Chad Johnson. Expect to get less ice time than John Amirante.
I wanna dive into the cap issues, but first, we have to talk about this waivers concept. I appreciate that Valiquette hasn't been playing great hockey, and that saving the $725,000 to send him to Hartford for a bit was a decent move. But it sets a precedent we need to answer for. Does anyone think Vali has been more responsible for goals against than, say, Michal Rozsival, to single one person out? Surely Rozsie's 1 goal, 5 assists, and -3 rating don't make up the difference. Does anyone think the $5 million we'd gain from placing Rozsival on waivers wouldn't afford us a few defensemen and space for Valiquette to go down on a conditioning assignment, with room to spare? Or, dear God, does anyone really think someone would try to claim him on waivers?
Someone is going to need to explain why Valiquette is getting waivers, but Rozsie isn't. Like, I just don't fucking understand how this works. Remember a mere 3 months ago, when John Tortorella was gonna be the coach who held his people accountable? We're a quarter of the way through the season, and he hasn't even put seven healthy defensemen on the roster at the same time, let alone actually scratching one. Come on. We're going to turn the team around by waiving Stephen Valiquette? The most devout believers among the Ranger community would have us believe that this is a move made to shake up the locker room, because Vali is so well-liked and respected among the team. The rest of us are dubious.
Right, so, cap woes. When we last visited our old friend the NHL salary cap, we were looking at $55,838,333, or $961,667 left under the cap, with a roster of:
Anisimov, Avery, Boyle, Brashear, Callahan, Drury, Dubinsky, Gaborik, Higgins, Kotalik, Lisin, Prospal, Voros
Del Zotto, Gilroy, Girardi, Redden, Rozsival, Staal
Lundqvist, Valiquette
Ugh. I know, right? And it only gets worse. With the losses of Drury and Dubinsky (and the return of Drury), we had been carrying an average of one extra forward. Be it Byers or Parenteau, it was an extra $500,000, leaving us only $461,667 (less than the minimum $500,000 to add any player at all). In fact, I don't really understand how we were allowed to carry Sanguinetti's $883,333 since Redden got injured without going over the cap. It's not like we placed anyone on injured reserve.
Anyway, you can see why we couldn't also bring up Johnson ($660,000) without sending Vali down. Even with sending Valli down, we need some more cap room to hire Christensen ($850,000) and keep Heikkinen ($875,000). So, we placed Dubi on long-term injured reserve, finally. What this means is that we are allowed to spend his salary (not his cap hit) on replacement players. Dubi's cap hit is $1.85 million for his 2-season contract, which pays him $1.7 million this year and $2 million next year. So, by my math:
$961,667 of cap space back then
+ $725,000 for Valiquette being placed on waivers = $1,686,667
+ $1.7 million for Dubinsky going on LTIR = $3,386,667
(Sanguinetti is zero sum, he was up and then back down)
- $500,000 for Parenteau = $2,886,667
- $660,000 for Johnson = $2,226,667
- $875,000 for Heikkinen = $1,351,667
- $850,000 for Christensen = $476,667
Right back down to just under the NHL minimum salary remaining in the cap, but now the roster looks like:
Anisimov, Avery, Boyle, Brashear, Callahan, Christensen, Drury, Dubinsky (LTIR), Gaborik, Higgins, Kotalik, Lisin, Parenteau, Prospal, Voros
Del Zotto, Gilroy, Girardi, Heikkinen, Redden, Rozsival, Staal
Johnson, Lundqvist
Which I guess sounds like a fuller roster on paper? I'm not impressed. Seriously, put Michal Rozsival on waivers, Torts. This will solve your cap woes and take a regular liability off the ice.
First of all, Donald Brashear apparently has some undisclosed injury again. This is largely meaningless to me, as even his apparent promotion to the second line hasn't convinced him to start throwing checks. Fights, sure, just not checks. More on the difference between fighting and toughness here, in Brett Cyrgalis's lengthy but fair Post blog entry, "Rangers Just Aren't Tough Enough." So, we'll see Brashear again whenever he shakes the old back off and comes back to punch people for another 3 weeks. Yeah, we don't miss that $1.4 million a year, really.
Now, some of you may remember a center named Erik Christensen. He was Colby Armstrong's worse half, back when they got sent together from the Penguins to the Thrashers in exchange for some French guy and Marian Hossa. Since then, Armstrong has been given the A in Atlanta, and Christensen has scored 0 points in 9 games for the Ducks before being put on waivers.
Guess what? He's ours now! Picked him right up off waivers. Our woes at center are solved! Yeah. So, we'll see how that goes.
But that's not all! In a move that seemed to say "Redden will be back Saturday," we sent Sanguinetti back down to Hartford yesterday. But, as it turns out, the move actually said "we're still holding open auditions," because today, we recalled Ilkka Heikkinen. Apparently we had our three games with a defenseman who actually checks people, and so we've moved on to auditioning another "offensively-minded defenseman." Yee. Haw.
Finally, and this is the really interesting one, our beloved Stephen Valiquette has been placed on waivers. Now, let's be clear about this: he hasn't been playing fantastic hockey, this is true. The way it was presented, the Rangers wanted not to release him, but to send him down to Hartford for a conditioning stint, but our cap woes prevented us from doing so. Before we dive into those, let's clarify what that means.
The supposed preferred option was to keep Lundqvist on the Rangers' roster. We could then send him to Hartford for conditioning, to give him more ice time, call up another backup goalie, and bring Valli back when he's ready. But, staying on the roster would mean he is still a Ranger, so his $725,000 continues to count against our cap, in addition to whatever we're paying the new goalie we call up. So, instead we placed him on waivers. The good news is that this makes him a Wolf (Wolfpacker?), not a Ranger, so he doesn't count against the cap. The bad news is he has to clear waivers, which means other teams have a chance at claiming him. So, that's why we had to do this: cause we don't have the $725,000 to kill under the cap.
And, it looks like we got lucky, and he cleared. So, welcome to the New York Rangers, Chad Johnson. Expect to get less ice time than John Amirante.
I wanna dive into the cap issues, but first, we have to talk about this waivers concept. I appreciate that Valiquette hasn't been playing great hockey, and that saving the $725,000 to send him to Hartford for a bit was a decent move. But it sets a precedent we need to answer for. Does anyone think Vali has been more responsible for goals against than, say, Michal Rozsival, to single one person out? Surely Rozsie's 1 goal, 5 assists, and -3 rating don't make up the difference. Does anyone think the $5 million we'd gain from placing Rozsival on waivers wouldn't afford us a few defensemen and space for Valiquette to go down on a conditioning assignment, with room to spare? Or, dear God, does anyone really think someone would try to claim him on waivers?
Someone is going to need to explain why Valiquette is getting waivers, but Rozsie isn't. Like, I just don't fucking understand how this works. Remember a mere 3 months ago, when John Tortorella was gonna be the coach who held his people accountable? We're a quarter of the way through the season, and he hasn't even put seven healthy defensemen on the roster at the same time, let alone actually scratching one. Come on. We're going to turn the team around by waiving Stephen Valiquette? The most devout believers among the Ranger community would have us believe that this is a move made to shake up the locker room, because Vali is so well-liked and respected among the team. The rest of us are dubious.
Right, so, cap woes. When we last visited our old friend the NHL salary cap, we were looking at $55,838,333, or $961,667 left under the cap, with a roster of:
Anisimov, Avery, Boyle, Brashear, Callahan, Drury, Dubinsky, Gaborik, Higgins, Kotalik, Lisin, Prospal, Voros
Del Zotto, Gilroy, Girardi, Redden, Rozsival, Staal
Lundqvist, Valiquette
Ugh. I know, right? And it only gets worse. With the losses of Drury and Dubinsky (and the return of Drury), we had been carrying an average of one extra forward. Be it Byers or Parenteau, it was an extra $500,000, leaving us only $461,667 (less than the minimum $500,000 to add any player at all). In fact, I don't really understand how we were allowed to carry Sanguinetti's $883,333 since Redden got injured without going over the cap. It's not like we placed anyone on injured reserve.
Anyway, you can see why we couldn't also bring up Johnson ($660,000) without sending Vali down. Even with sending Valli down, we need some more cap room to hire Christensen ($850,000) and keep Heikkinen ($875,000). So, we placed Dubi on long-term injured reserve, finally. What this means is that we are allowed to spend his salary (not his cap hit) on replacement players. Dubi's cap hit is $1.85 million for his 2-season contract, which pays him $1.7 million this year and $2 million next year. So, by my math:
$961,667 of cap space back then
+ $725,000 for Valiquette being placed on waivers = $1,686,667
+ $1.7 million for Dubinsky going on LTIR = $3,386,667
(Sanguinetti is zero sum, he was up and then back down)
- $500,000 for Parenteau = $2,886,667
- $660,000 for Johnson = $2,226,667
- $875,000 for Heikkinen = $1,351,667
- $850,000 for Christensen = $476,667
Right back down to just under the NHL minimum salary remaining in the cap, but now the roster looks like:
Anisimov, Avery, Boyle, Brashear, Callahan, Christensen, Drury, Dubinsky (LTIR), Gaborik, Higgins, Kotalik, Lisin, Parenteau, Prospal, Voros
Del Zotto, Gilroy, Girardi, Heikkinen, Redden, Rozsival, Staal
Johnson, Lundqvist
Which I guess sounds like a fuller roster on paper? I'm not impressed. Seriously, put Michal Rozsival on waivers, Torts. This will solve your cap woes and take a regular liability off the ice.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sometimes officials don't understand hockey
Okay, people, it's time to talk about why hockey is getting fucked.
Now's as good a time as any, because no thinking person could believe that I'm trying to paint this loss as the fault of the officials. We lost 8-3 (the night after losing 5-1), we clearly deserved it, and the shitty officiating didn't directly affect the score much anyway. There's stuff to say about the Rangers, but I don't really wanna talk about our shitty hockey team right now. I want to talk about what's happening to the game of hockey at the hands of these ass-hats.
"The GMs are meeting." That's the mantra we keep hearing. Every time there's one of these open-ice hits, one of these blindsiding, away-from-the-puck, looking-the-other-way, obviously-intending-to-injure-a-dude, likely concussing hits, we hear it: the GMs are meeting to discuss what to do. Like some ridiculous cabal of faux NHL royalty (I picture each of them smoking a trademark Sather cigar), the word is that they are going to solve this problem, that more and more of these kinds of hits happen every season, and that nothing seems to deter these kinds of players from doing what they do.
7:39 into the third, 19 seconds after the Pens solidified a win by going up 6-3, Matt Cooke delivered such a questionable, open-ice hit to one Artem Anisimov. Anisimov hobbled off the ice and spent the rest of the night on the bench, with smelling salts. Cooke was awarded a 2-minute interference minor and nothing more. Today, the league decided that this was yet another of this mysterious plague of headshots that they can't possibly understand, and it delivered a 2-game suspension to Cooke. That's it, punishment doled out, problem solved.
Here's the thing: I don't wanna complain about the actual hit. It was obviously dangerous, and there's a pretty strong argument it was intentional. If it was, then part of me agrees with the people who say "make that 2-game suspension a 20-game suspension and it'll stop," because that makes sense. At the end of the day, Cooke doesn't care a whole lot that he got caught and suspended this time: in fact, back in January of this year, he did something similar to Scott Walker, received naught more than a minor interference call at the time, and got a 2-game suspension after the fact. It's easy to see that this kind of officiating (especially with the stigma "you can't suspend someone for the important games" (see: Malkin, automatic 1-game suspension, last playoffs, blah blah blah) is not a deterrent. From the Latin, a deterrent would be "that which deters," and we have just seen that it hasn't. Deterred. Right.
So, yes, if the penalty for this kind of hit somehow became egregiously large, that would certainly do more to, well, deter. But, again, I'm not here to argue that Cooke is a pig or that he deserved a 2-month vacation or anything like that. Even with a phenomenally increased suspension (which I'm not necessarily against), mistakes would still be made. The league would be scared of handing out such a steep sentence, and Cooke would likely have instead received no suspension at all in today's review were this the case. Plus, then Avery could get 30 games for calling Brodeur fat. It's not the cleanest solution. Because let's face it: refs these days are imperfect, by which I mean very shitty at their jobs. These guys blew an icing call, not to mention that Crosby was offsides on his first goal (again, not that it would have made any difference).
So, how is this supposed to work? As the guys in the MSG post-game show uncharacteristically sagely put it, "the players need to police themselves." Cooke needs to know that he will receive many punches for it. Hockey is physical for a reason, and teammates need to stand up for one another and make it clear that running their men all over the ice will not be tolerated. This is where the officials are really, honestly making the game more dangerous.
Cooke's next shift, Brashear also jumped on the ice. He didn't retaliate in a comparable way, but in an appropriate one: he went after Cooke for a fight. Two men, facing off and punching each other. It's undeniably integral to hockey. However, as Sam Rosen (yes, Sam Rosen) said post-game, "it's almost like -- and I know this can't be true -- the linesman doesn't understand how hockey works." As they started to square off, a linesman skated between them (Brashear still got a couple of punches in around the linesman's head before he separated them, but still). He wouldn't let them fight. Brashear got a double minor for roughing, and that was it.
This is how the officials are destroying hockey. In a quest to make it more "approachable" or "PC" or whatever the fuck they're trying to do to market our sport to a bunch of football fans who will never like it, they're trying to remove the notion that it's so violent. Somehow, however, they've misunderstood the actual sport, and they're approaching it like a bunch of people who don't watch hockey. They're penalizing the retaliations more than the infractions. The infractions are subtle intents to injure. The retaliations are noble, obvious man-to-man fights. If they take out the retaliations, more suburban American moms will watch hockey.
What they somehow haven't managed to get through their apparently hockey-deprived brains (or, God forbid, what they understand and don't care about) is that this solution has more people leaving the ice on stretchers. It was undeniably the right thing to do for Brashear to go out there and challenge Cooke - even if you think the hit was legit and legal, you'd agree it was hard and shaking enough that you'd want your man to come out and fight for it. By getting in the way of that fight and sending Brashear off for a double, the officials are showing that they don't understand that, and they're implicitly letting Cooke off the hook for the hit (suspension or otherwise) to return and do it again another time.
On Cooke's following shift, with Brashear in the box, Ryan Callahan, earning his 'A', jumped out to challenge Cooke himself. This was mind-boggling. It was as textbook as a hockey fight gets. They lined up for the faceoff, Callahan tapped Cooke's stick, they looked at each other, tapped sticks, dropped gloves, skated out and circled each other, and came in and started punching (Callahan got his ass kicked, no surprises). When they skated apart, they had each earned the standard 5-minute major for fighting...and a 10-minute misconduct.
For what??? The two parties agreed to fight, there was a physical in-game reason for it, it was an honest, clean fight...it was completely appropriate in every sense. If this fight earned each man a misconduct, I cannot imagine circumstances in which a fight doesn't. The message from the officials, then, is clearly just a generic "do not fight." And that is completely scary.
For a while now, usually in coming to the defense of Sean Avery, I have been circling this issue of what a "dirty" player does and what a "pest" does. It's only natural, therefore, that I invoke Avery again to draw a final comparison here. With 6:14 left in the game, now already at its eventual final score of 8-3, Avery, seemingly unprovoked, went after Ruslan Fedotenko from behind and started punching him. It looked like a hockey fight, only Avery was the only one participating. [Not The Point: It was later revealed that Fedotenko had tried to slew-foot Avery on the previous play, and this is what got Avery so mad. Fair enough. But still.] [Also Not The Point: When this has happened in reverse, with Avery playing the part of Fedotenko, everyone has yelled about how Avery is such a coward, how he'll get in your face but not actually fight you.]
But here's the actual point: what Avery did was absolutely wrong. He got 17 minutes in penalties, and he probably deserved them all. He at least deserved most of them. He jumped after the guy and started pummeling him in a one-sided fight. This is a bullshit move, and I don't support it. Yes, Penguin fans, go ahead, read that again: Avery was in the wrong there.
But what the sports media fails to understand, and what I fear the officials are also missing, is the difference between what Cooke did and what Avery did. Again, please note: I am not saying that Avery was justified, nor that he shouldn't have been penalized. But it was never, for a second, a done to take Fedotenko out of the game. It was done in anger, and it was physical, and it broke the rules in a major way. But Avery was never trying to give Fedotenko a career-ending concussion. The separation people don't seem to be able to make is a separation of respect for the game and its players.
People laugh when I talk about Sean Avery and respect, but the fact is that Avery's just a pest. He's an asshole, yeah, and he yells obscenities about your mother at you, and he distracts you and he sometimes goes off the deep end and tries to fight you. Compare that to open-ice hits that attempt to snap necks and give concussions, or to knee-on-knee hits that take a guy out for half a season, or to checking someone's face into the boards when he's on his way off the ice. It's one thing that the media can't tell the difference, and it labels Avery the "dirtiest" player in a league that contains Jarkko Ruutu, and that NHL live put Cooke's move and Avery's in the same category. But it's another that the officials start to buy into it. If the sportswriters and broadcasters aren't going to know the difference between "annoying" and "potentially career-ending," then at least Colin Campbell and his striped boys had better figure it out soon - every day they don't is one more day a good hockey player could be removed from the game.
Fighting doesn't make the game more dangerous, you ignorant fucks. In fact, it can help keep the game safer. But a body of lawmakers (or, at the very least, enforcers) that thinks an honest, respectable fight is worse than a subtle attempt to end a career? That unquestionably makes it more dangerous. Next time, Derek Amell or Steve Barton (whichever linesman you were), back up, let the men fight like they're supposed to, skate away, get off the ice, and go home. There was probably a So You Think You Can Dance marathon that would have tided you over until kickoff at 1:00 the next day.
Now's as good a time as any, because no thinking person could believe that I'm trying to paint this loss as the fault of the officials. We lost 8-3 (the night after losing 5-1), we clearly deserved it, and the shitty officiating didn't directly affect the score much anyway. There's stuff to say about the Rangers, but I don't really wanna talk about our shitty hockey team right now. I want to talk about what's happening to the game of hockey at the hands of these ass-hats.
"The GMs are meeting." That's the mantra we keep hearing. Every time there's one of these open-ice hits, one of these blindsiding, away-from-the-puck, looking-the-other-way, obviously-intending-to-injure-a-dude, likely concussing hits, we hear it: the GMs are meeting to discuss what to do. Like some ridiculous cabal of faux NHL royalty (I picture each of them smoking a trademark Sather cigar), the word is that they are going to solve this problem, that more and more of these kinds of hits happen every season, and that nothing seems to deter these kinds of players from doing what they do.
7:39 into the third, 19 seconds after the Pens solidified a win by going up 6-3, Matt Cooke delivered such a questionable, open-ice hit to one Artem Anisimov. Anisimov hobbled off the ice and spent the rest of the night on the bench, with smelling salts. Cooke was awarded a 2-minute interference minor and nothing more. Today, the league decided that this was yet another of this mysterious plague of headshots that they can't possibly understand, and it delivered a 2-game suspension to Cooke. That's it, punishment doled out, problem solved.
Here's the thing: I don't wanna complain about the actual hit. It was obviously dangerous, and there's a pretty strong argument it was intentional. If it was, then part of me agrees with the people who say "make that 2-game suspension a 20-game suspension and it'll stop," because that makes sense. At the end of the day, Cooke doesn't care a whole lot that he got caught and suspended this time: in fact, back in January of this year, he did something similar to Scott Walker, received naught more than a minor interference call at the time, and got a 2-game suspension after the fact. It's easy to see that this kind of officiating (especially with the stigma "you can't suspend someone for the important games" (see: Malkin, automatic 1-game suspension, last playoffs, blah blah blah) is not a deterrent. From the Latin, a deterrent would be "that which deters," and we have just seen that it hasn't. Deterred. Right.
So, yes, if the penalty for this kind of hit somehow became egregiously large, that would certainly do more to, well, deter. But, again, I'm not here to argue that Cooke is a pig or that he deserved a 2-month vacation or anything like that. Even with a phenomenally increased suspension (which I'm not necessarily against), mistakes would still be made. The league would be scared of handing out such a steep sentence, and Cooke would likely have instead received no suspension at all in today's review were this the case. Plus, then Avery could get 30 games for calling Brodeur fat. It's not the cleanest solution. Because let's face it: refs these days are imperfect, by which I mean very shitty at their jobs. These guys blew an icing call, not to mention that Crosby was offsides on his first goal (again, not that it would have made any difference).
So, how is this supposed to work? As the guys in the MSG post-game show uncharacteristically sagely put it, "the players need to police themselves." Cooke needs to know that he will receive many punches for it. Hockey is physical for a reason, and teammates need to stand up for one another and make it clear that running their men all over the ice will not be tolerated. This is where the officials are really, honestly making the game more dangerous.
Cooke's next shift, Brashear also jumped on the ice. He didn't retaliate in a comparable way, but in an appropriate one: he went after Cooke for a fight. Two men, facing off and punching each other. It's undeniably integral to hockey. However, as Sam Rosen (yes, Sam Rosen) said post-game, "it's almost like -- and I know this can't be true -- the linesman doesn't understand how hockey works." As they started to square off, a linesman skated between them (Brashear still got a couple of punches in around the linesman's head before he separated them, but still). He wouldn't let them fight. Brashear got a double minor for roughing, and that was it.
This is how the officials are destroying hockey. In a quest to make it more "approachable" or "PC" or whatever the fuck they're trying to do to market our sport to a bunch of football fans who will never like it, they're trying to remove the notion that it's so violent. Somehow, however, they've misunderstood the actual sport, and they're approaching it like a bunch of people who don't watch hockey. They're penalizing the retaliations more than the infractions. The infractions are subtle intents to injure. The retaliations are noble, obvious man-to-man fights. If they take out the retaliations, more suburban American moms will watch hockey.
What they somehow haven't managed to get through their apparently hockey-deprived brains (or, God forbid, what they understand and don't care about) is that this solution has more people leaving the ice on stretchers. It was undeniably the right thing to do for Brashear to go out there and challenge Cooke - even if you think the hit was legit and legal, you'd agree it was hard and shaking enough that you'd want your man to come out and fight for it. By getting in the way of that fight and sending Brashear off for a double, the officials are showing that they don't understand that, and they're implicitly letting Cooke off the hook for the hit (suspension or otherwise) to return and do it again another time.
On Cooke's following shift, with Brashear in the box, Ryan Callahan, earning his 'A', jumped out to challenge Cooke himself. This was mind-boggling. It was as textbook as a hockey fight gets. They lined up for the faceoff, Callahan tapped Cooke's stick, they looked at each other, tapped sticks, dropped gloves, skated out and circled each other, and came in and started punching (Callahan got his ass kicked, no surprises). When they skated apart, they had each earned the standard 5-minute major for fighting...and a 10-minute misconduct.
For what??? The two parties agreed to fight, there was a physical in-game reason for it, it was an honest, clean fight...it was completely appropriate in every sense. If this fight earned each man a misconduct, I cannot imagine circumstances in which a fight doesn't. The message from the officials, then, is clearly just a generic "do not fight." And that is completely scary.
For a while now, usually in coming to the defense of Sean Avery, I have been circling this issue of what a "dirty" player does and what a "pest" does. It's only natural, therefore, that I invoke Avery again to draw a final comparison here. With 6:14 left in the game, now already at its eventual final score of 8-3, Avery, seemingly unprovoked, went after Ruslan Fedotenko from behind and started punching him. It looked like a hockey fight, only Avery was the only one participating. [Not The Point: It was later revealed that Fedotenko had tried to slew-foot Avery on the previous play, and this is what got Avery so mad. Fair enough. But still.] [Also Not The Point: When this has happened in reverse, with Avery playing the part of Fedotenko, everyone has yelled about how Avery is such a coward, how he'll get in your face but not actually fight you.]
But here's the actual point: what Avery did was absolutely wrong. He got 17 minutes in penalties, and he probably deserved them all. He at least deserved most of them. He jumped after the guy and started pummeling him in a one-sided fight. This is a bullshit move, and I don't support it. Yes, Penguin fans, go ahead, read that again: Avery was in the wrong there.
But what the sports media fails to understand, and what I fear the officials are also missing, is the difference between what Cooke did and what Avery did. Again, please note: I am not saying that Avery was justified, nor that he shouldn't have been penalized. But it was never, for a second, a done to take Fedotenko out of the game. It was done in anger, and it was physical, and it broke the rules in a major way. But Avery was never trying to give Fedotenko a career-ending concussion. The separation people don't seem to be able to make is a separation of respect for the game and its players.
People laugh when I talk about Sean Avery and respect, but the fact is that Avery's just a pest. He's an asshole, yeah, and he yells obscenities about your mother at you, and he distracts you and he sometimes goes off the deep end and tries to fight you. Compare that to open-ice hits that attempt to snap necks and give concussions, or to knee-on-knee hits that take a guy out for half a season, or to checking someone's face into the boards when he's on his way off the ice. It's one thing that the media can't tell the difference, and it labels Avery the "dirtiest" player in a league that contains Jarkko Ruutu, and that NHL live put Cooke's move and Avery's in the same category. But it's another that the officials start to buy into it. If the sportswriters and broadcasters aren't going to know the difference between "annoying" and "potentially career-ending," then at least Colin Campbell and his striped boys had better figure it out soon - every day they don't is one more day a good hockey player could be removed from the game.
Fighting doesn't make the game more dangerous, you ignorant fucks. In fact, it can help keep the game safer. But a body of lawmakers (or, at the very least, enforcers) that thinks an honest, respectable fight is worse than a subtle attempt to end a career? That unquestionably makes it more dangerous. Next time, Derek Amell or Steve Barton (whichever linesman you were), back up, let the men fight like they're supposed to, skate away, get off the ice, and go home. There was probably a So You Think You Can Dance marathon that would have tided you over until kickoff at 1:00 the next day.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
No, really
Drury(*) practiced fully today and is expected to return for tomorrow night in Florida. Meanwhile, Kotalik apparently suffered some kind of nondescript minor injury last night and is probably sitting this one out? I guess that's convenient, since Drury(*) can just slip right into that line, leaving Higgins-Prospal-Gaborik and Avery-Anisimov-Parenteau intact (hooray), and producing a less-awkward-than-last-night's-version line of Lisin-Drury(*)-Callahan. So, we get to see how Drury(*) is in a game situation. Happy Thanksgiving break to me (and anyone else who inexplicably gets Wednesday off, too)!
Real quick, before Thanksgiving break
Okay, look, last night was great, obviously. It's fun to score 7 goals in a game, especially when 5 of them aren't scored by Marian Gaborik (or Vinnie Prospal, for that matter). Avery continued to come back out of his shell, and that's the best sign of the night. I thought Redden actually played a pretty good game, but it's hard to look bad when your team scores 6 goals in 15:54. Not that that stopped Rozsival. Lisin-Callahan-Kotalik was unsurprisingly flat, given how very little chemistry that "line" has any reason to have. Higgins gave the best audition to date for the part of Left Wing on the Top Line, and the Avery-Anisimov-Parenteau line was fun to watch; even Parenteau looked good. Del Zotto and Gilroy each had their exciting offensive defenseman moments, though Del Zotto is still afraid to shoot on the Power Play, on account of Gaborik being on the ice somewhere. I'm hoping that tonight will start to help shake off everyone (except Prospal)'s fear of shooting when Gaborik is nearby. It's a good way to end a homestand before starting a 4-games-in-3-nights road trip.
But as Avery said: "I'm happy that we were able to score the way we did, but realistically it's only one game. The challenge is to sustain it." The sad truth is that this is the same Ranger team that, up until last night, were 3-7 in their previous 10, being outscored 28-17, including a 4-2 victory over Edmonton and a 5-3 loss to Atlanta, without which -- do the math -- they scored a pitiful 10 goals in 8 games. Even with last night's win, we are outside the top 8. If we assume everyone wins their games in hand over us, we are ahead of only Montréal, Toronto, Carolina, and the Islanders in the East. Things are not great.
Last night, we put together an exciting offensive effort, accented by some C-grade goaltending from the opposition, yeah. I would even say we played a decent first 10 minutes, despite being down two 9:31 in. But we were significantly weak in our own zone, and we played large swaths of the third period badly (though there's an argument that it's hard for a team to feel like they have to play hard when they earn a 5-goal lead). It's not hard, however, to feel like with slightly better goaltending, Columbus could have made this a game.
Unrelatedly, props to Voros and Brashear for taking their turns kicking Jared Boll's ass, especially to Brashear, who punched Boll in the head about a dozen times before stopping, looking up at the refs to say "uh, what am I supposed to do now? He's still holding on to me," shrugging, and punching him in the head a few more times. That was awesome.
Anyway, the point is, we need to sustain this kind of pressure and tighten up defensively. This game was fun, but it was not exactly a show of our dominance. Florida tomorrow night, Tampa Friday night, and a home-and-home against the Pens Saturday and Monday will be good places to attempt to prove something.
Oh, and have you heard the rumor? Drury's prepped to play tomorrow.
But as Avery said: "I'm happy that we were able to score the way we did, but realistically it's only one game. The challenge is to sustain it." The sad truth is that this is the same Ranger team that, up until last night, were 3-7 in their previous 10, being outscored 28-17, including a 4-2 victory over Edmonton and a 5-3 loss to Atlanta, without which -- do the math -- they scored a pitiful 10 goals in 8 games. Even with last night's win, we are outside the top 8. If we assume everyone wins their games in hand over us, we are ahead of only Montréal, Toronto, Carolina, and the Islanders in the East. Things are not great.
Last night, we put together an exciting offensive effort, accented by some C-grade goaltending from the opposition, yeah. I would even say we played a decent first 10 minutes, despite being down two 9:31 in. But we were significantly weak in our own zone, and we played large swaths of the third period badly (though there's an argument that it's hard for a team to feel like they have to play hard when they earn a 5-goal lead). It's not hard, however, to feel like with slightly better goaltending, Columbus could have made this a game.
Unrelatedly, props to Voros and Brashear for taking their turns kicking Jared Boll's ass, especially to Brashear, who punched Boll in the head about a dozen times before stopping, looking up at the refs to say "uh, what am I supposed to do now? He's still holding on to me," shrugging, and punching him in the head a few more times. That was awesome.
Anyway, the point is, we need to sustain this kind of pressure and tighten up defensively. This game was fun, but it was not exactly a show of our dominance. Florida tomorrow night, Tampa Friday night, and a home-and-home against the Pens Saturday and Monday will be good places to attempt to prove something.
Oh, and have you heard the rumor? Drury's prepped to play tomorrow.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Larry Brooks is right about all of these things
I know I've been complaining about him and his sometime crusade against our new coach. But Brooksie's piece in the Post today is exactly accurate. He says a lot of things and every one of them is true. I have nothing to add here. Just go read that article and pretend I wrote it.
Monday, November 16, 2009
On opposites
I am the opposite of Stan Fischler, insofar as I am right about everything, and he is wrong about everything (by this same logic, Chico Resch is the opposite of my father). Usually, we (I) here at Play Petr Prucha leave old man Fischler alone. He's like the Grandpa I never had: I always genuinely enjoyed spending time with both of my grandfathers, and Stan Fischler is that old man through whose opinions you smile and nod because he seems so happy about what he's saying, and he's not really hurting anyone anyway. But today, "The Maven" deserves some special dispensation.
On his Twitter stream yesterday (no, really, his fucking Twitter stream), Fischler, with a cry of "I only have 140 characters, there's no room for supporting evidence anyway!", dropped this unjustifiable nonsense: "It's abundantly clear now that Marian Gaborik is better for the Rangers -- on the ice, in the lockeroom -- than kookie [sic] Jaromir Jagr ever was."
Not "I prefer Gaborik's playing style to Jagr's" or "I think Gaborik could end up being better for the Rangers in the long run" or "I like hanging out with Gaborik more" or "Gaborik doesn't have dumbass facial hair, and that's a plus" or anything like that, but "it's abundantly clear." Really, you clueless fucking codger? What, exactly, makes that clarity so abundant?
First of all, I am as sick tired now as I was in 2006 or people complaining about Jagr being some kind of hockey diva. He was great in Pittsburgh, then he went to Washington, and he wasn't happy with the system there, and it wasn't good for him, and his productivity decreased because of it. Everyone decided that meant he was a whiny bitch who was intentionally playing worse hockey because he didn't like it there. That's fucking dumb. No one decides to perform worse in order to spite his club. Certainly not Jaromir Jagr.
Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time in the New York Rangers locker room from 2005 to 2008, but I didn't really get the impression he was a burden there. Notwithstanding Fischler's sophomoric "And what superstar REFUSES captaincy?" (one that isn't willing to take that title until he's sure he can actually handle it, you buffoon), wasn't Jagr exactly the kind of captain we're missing right now? The kind that, when you're down three games to none in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, captains from the ice by playing a one-man fast, physical hockey game at home, putting on a show that says "we're not going down without a fight," and scoring 2 goals and an assist to win the game 3-0 seemingly by himself? The kind that afterwards, despite all evidence to the contrary, tells reporters with a confident grin that there is absolutely still something up your sleeves, just wait until Game 5? I mean, we lost Game 5, losing the series like we were always going to, but still, isn't that the kind of captain you need, if you're gonna go deep? Chris Drury is a very good hockey player, but he could stand to take a college-level course or two on captaincy from Jaromir Jagr. Marian Gaborik might be a lot of fun in the locker room, but there's a reason he's not even an Alternate Captain right now. He's an offensive leader, but despite my lack of experience in the locker room itself, I'm betting he's not a locker room leader.
But perhaps Our Mr. Fischler isn't talking about the human interest side of the story (he is). Perhaps this isn't about being a captain (it is). Perhaps the clarity of the situation became so abundant when Staniel did a deep statistical dive into the offensive prolificacy of each player (it didn't; he didn't). Let's give him the benefit of the doubt there (no).
In Jagr's first season with the Rangers, he scored 54 goals, good for the all-time single season Ranger record, beating out my boy Adam Graves's 52 the year we won The Cup. He also scored 69 assists, putting him at seventh all-time on the Ranger list, behind a Gretzky, a Zubov, a Messier, and three Brian Leetches. For the arithmetically slow, this comes to 123 points on the season, which blew the previous Ranger record out of the water: only 5 other Rangers have ever scored over 100 points in a season, and none of them broke 110 (Ratelle - 109, Messier - 107, Hadfield - 106, Mike Rogers - 103, Leetch - 102).
In his second season with us, when his "decline" began, he put up only 30 goals and 66 assists, good for only ninth all-time in assists (one point behind Gretzky) and eleventh all-time in points (also one point behind Gretzky). He also played all 82 games in each of the three seasons he was with us, and he led the team in goals and points in all three of them, and in assists in two of the three. If you ignore all that wishy-washy "he was a fantastic captain" stuff, he was statistically significant to the Rangers' all-time records. Seriously, look at the list of Rangers' single-season records. Jagr is tied with Mark Messier and Brian Leetch for total appearances on this page, with seven. Behind them, Wayne Gretzky appears six times, and then Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Henrik Lundqvist are tied with four appearances each.
This is not to say that Gaborik isn't incredibly valuable. He is. Of 20 games so far this season, he has played 18, and he has scored 13 goals and 12 assists, for a total of 25 points so far. That's nothing to discount. He's on track to play, in an 82-game season, between 73 and 74 games. In those games, he's on track to tie or just beat Jagr's 54 goal record (54.6), and to net an additional 50.4 assists, for 105 points on the season (which would be fifth for the Rangers all-time). This is a hallmark player, no doubt.
But even if we make the statistical mistake of assuming that the man's performance through 18 hockey games is unquestionably going to continue throughout the rest of the season, through continually rotating linemates, while we come up with some fantastic numbers, we absolutely do not find numbers that come anywhere near abundantly clearly more valuable than Jagr's. In fact, we find numbers that fall short of Jagr's first season with us (which, I'll remind you, was a full season, not an imagined season based on 18 productive games).
And none of this even begins to mention the on-ice intangibles. Jaromir Jagr paved the way for other players to be better. I don't mean that in the feel-good leadershippy way: he took the brunt of every defense, game in and game out. Jagr demanded the attention of the opposition so much that it left other players open on the ice to do what they wanted, and he demanded the talent of the opposition so much that his teammates never had to match up against the best players on the other squad. It's something only the truly elite players do.
Again, none of this is to take anything away from Marian Gaborik, who is unquestionably the most prolific part of the first Ranger team to pose any real offensive threat since Sather let Jagr go to Avangard Omsk. He's fantastic. I would have no problem with Fischler offering the opinion that Gaborik could, if he keeps playing like he has been playing, end up proving as useful as Jagr was for the Rangers. But, really? Twenty games into the season, of which Gaborik has played 18, and it's "abundantly clear"? Cause Jagr was too "kookie"? Get over yourself, old man. You're like a shitty, lame, American Don Cherry who can't afford the alcohol, the attitude, or the wardrobe. Retire.
In other news, it's time to stop enjoying our close-but-mediocre 7-round shootout win against the mediocre Ottawa Senators Saturday afternoon. We couldn't even handle Kovalchuk's first game back with the Thrashers, and tomorrow night we have to deal with Ovechkin's first game back with the Capitals. This game could be very, very painful.
Hey, wow, I was gonna end the post there, but guess what I just learned? Up at the top of the post, I wrote that thing about Stan Fischler being my opposite and Chico Resch being my dad's, but that was before I just now learned that Chico and The Maven have written a book together. That's fucking hilarious. Under no circumstances will I pay money for this street trash, but if someone wants to donate a copy to Play Petr Prucha, I will pay you back by blogging about how wrong they are about things. Bonus points if you stole it. Double bonus if you stole two copies so you could pee on one and send the other one. Negative bonus points if you pee on the one you send me. The book is embarrassingly called "Who's Better: Rangers, Devils, Islanders or Flyers?" Maybe my father and I should write a book, too. Working title: "How Hockey Works: A Children's Treasury of Schmucks You Shouldn't Ever Listen To" - what do you think?
On his Twitter stream yesterday (no, really, his fucking Twitter stream), Fischler, with a cry of "I only have 140 characters, there's no room for supporting evidence anyway!", dropped this unjustifiable nonsense: "It's abundantly clear now that Marian Gaborik is better for the Rangers -- on the ice, in the lockeroom -- than kookie [sic] Jaromir Jagr ever was."
Not "I prefer Gaborik's playing style to Jagr's" or "I think Gaborik could end up being better for the Rangers in the long run" or "I like hanging out with Gaborik more" or "Gaborik doesn't have dumbass facial hair, and that's a plus" or anything like that, but "it's abundantly clear." Really, you clueless fucking codger? What, exactly, makes that clarity so abundant?
First of all, I am as sick tired now as I was in 2006 or people complaining about Jagr being some kind of hockey diva. He was great in Pittsburgh, then he went to Washington, and he wasn't happy with the system there, and it wasn't good for him, and his productivity decreased because of it. Everyone decided that meant he was a whiny bitch who was intentionally playing worse hockey because he didn't like it there. That's fucking dumb. No one decides to perform worse in order to spite his club. Certainly not Jaromir Jagr.
Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time in the New York Rangers locker room from 2005 to 2008, but I didn't really get the impression he was a burden there. Notwithstanding Fischler's sophomoric "And what superstar REFUSES captaincy?" (one that isn't willing to take that title until he's sure he can actually handle it, you buffoon), wasn't Jagr exactly the kind of captain we're missing right now? The kind that, when you're down three games to none in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, captains from the ice by playing a one-man fast, physical hockey game at home, putting on a show that says "we're not going down without a fight," and scoring 2 goals and an assist to win the game 3-0 seemingly by himself? The kind that afterwards, despite all evidence to the contrary, tells reporters with a confident grin that there is absolutely still something up your sleeves, just wait until Game 5? I mean, we lost Game 5, losing the series like we were always going to, but still, isn't that the kind of captain you need, if you're gonna go deep? Chris Drury is a very good hockey player, but he could stand to take a college-level course or two on captaincy from Jaromir Jagr. Marian Gaborik might be a lot of fun in the locker room, but there's a reason he's not even an Alternate Captain right now. He's an offensive leader, but despite my lack of experience in the locker room itself, I'm betting he's not a locker room leader.
But perhaps Our Mr. Fischler isn't talking about the human interest side of the story (he is). Perhaps this isn't about being a captain (it is). Perhaps the clarity of the situation became so abundant when Staniel did a deep statistical dive into the offensive prolificacy of each player (it didn't; he didn't). Let's give him the benefit of the doubt there (no).
In Jagr's first season with the Rangers, he scored 54 goals, good for the all-time single season Ranger record, beating out my boy Adam Graves's 52 the year we won The Cup. He also scored 69 assists, putting him at seventh all-time on the Ranger list, behind a Gretzky, a Zubov, a Messier, and three Brian Leetches. For the arithmetically slow, this comes to 123 points on the season, which blew the previous Ranger record out of the water: only 5 other Rangers have ever scored over 100 points in a season, and none of them broke 110 (Ratelle - 109, Messier - 107, Hadfield - 106, Mike Rogers - 103, Leetch - 102).
In his second season with us, when his "decline" began, he put up only 30 goals and 66 assists, good for only ninth all-time in assists (one point behind Gretzky) and eleventh all-time in points (also one point behind Gretzky). He also played all 82 games in each of the three seasons he was with us, and he led the team in goals and points in all three of them, and in assists in two of the three. If you ignore all that wishy-washy "he was a fantastic captain" stuff, he was statistically significant to the Rangers' all-time records. Seriously, look at the list of Rangers' single-season records. Jagr is tied with Mark Messier and Brian Leetch for total appearances on this page, with seven. Behind them, Wayne Gretzky appears six times, and then Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Henrik Lundqvist are tied with four appearances each.
This is not to say that Gaborik isn't incredibly valuable. He is. Of 20 games so far this season, he has played 18, and he has scored 13 goals and 12 assists, for a total of 25 points so far. That's nothing to discount. He's on track to play, in an 82-game season, between 73 and 74 games. In those games, he's on track to tie or just beat Jagr's 54 goal record (54.6), and to net an additional 50.4 assists, for 105 points on the season (which would be fifth for the Rangers all-time). This is a hallmark player, no doubt.
But even if we make the statistical mistake of assuming that the man's performance through 18 hockey games is unquestionably going to continue throughout the rest of the season, through continually rotating linemates, while we come up with some fantastic numbers, we absolutely do not find numbers that come anywhere near abundantly clearly more valuable than Jagr's. In fact, we find numbers that fall short of Jagr's first season with us (which, I'll remind you, was a full season, not an imagined season based on 18 productive games).
And none of this even begins to mention the on-ice intangibles. Jaromir Jagr paved the way for other players to be better. I don't mean that in the feel-good leadershippy way: he took the brunt of every defense, game in and game out. Jagr demanded the attention of the opposition so much that it left other players open on the ice to do what they wanted, and he demanded the talent of the opposition so much that his teammates never had to match up against the best players on the other squad. It's something only the truly elite players do.
Again, none of this is to take anything away from Marian Gaborik, who is unquestionably the most prolific part of the first Ranger team to pose any real offensive threat since Sather let Jagr go to Avangard Omsk. He's fantastic. I would have no problem with Fischler offering the opinion that Gaborik could, if he keeps playing like he has been playing, end up proving as useful as Jagr was for the Rangers. But, really? Twenty games into the season, of which Gaborik has played 18, and it's "abundantly clear"? Cause Jagr was too "kookie"? Get over yourself, old man. You're like a shitty, lame, American Don Cherry who can't afford the alcohol, the attitude, or the wardrobe. Retire.
In other news, it's time to stop enjoying our close-but-mediocre 7-round shootout win against the mediocre Ottawa Senators Saturday afternoon. We couldn't even handle Kovalchuk's first game back with the Thrashers, and tomorrow night we have to deal with Ovechkin's first game back with the Capitals. This game could be very, very painful.
Hey, wow, I was gonna end the post there, but guess what I just learned? Up at the top of the post, I wrote that thing about Stan Fischler being my opposite and Chico Resch being my dad's, but that was before I just now learned that Chico and The Maven have written a book together. That's fucking hilarious. Under no circumstances will I pay money for this street trash, but if someone wants to donate a copy to Play Petr Prucha, I will pay you back by blogging about how wrong they are about things. Bonus points if you stole it. Double bonus if you stole two copies so you could pee on one and send the other one. Negative bonus points if you pee on the one you send me. The book is embarrassingly called "Who's Better: Rangers, Devils, Islanders or Flyers?" Maybe my father and I should write a book, too. Working title: "How Hockey Works: A Children's Treasury of Schmucks You Shouldn't Ever Listen To" - what do you think?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Who plays tonight?
A few quick things: on the Thrashers side, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is now reporting that Kovalchuk did, in fact, make the trip to New York tonight and will be a game-time decision. On our side, Lundqvist has been confirmed as the starter for tonight. Also, I was slightly mistaken about our lines: Brashear-Voros-Byers isn't actually the fourth line, those are the three men acting as our fourth-line wings. Our fourth line, whenever it does make it to the ice, will be made up of two of those three (all three are dressed tonight, they will rotate), centered by one of our other centers (Prospal, Anisimov, or Boyle), double-shifted. Also, I was half right about the wings. Anisimov will get Higgins and Kotalik, and Boyle will get Avery and Callahan.
On Flowcharts
Unlike my friends at Free Tank Carter, I'm not funny enough to write my own flowchart. However, this one was passed to me by a friend (it comes from the Maple Leafs blog Down Goes Brown), and it's worth sharing. And so, meine Damen und Herren, I present to you the top secret decision-making flowchart Colin Campbell and his squad use to determine suspension cases.
No one comes up
So, on the injury front, Lundqvist practiced today and should play tonight, saying he feels better. Drury had a "bad day" at practice today, and is basically ruled out for the next couple of games, at least. I expect that to continue for a long while, before we're sure his head is okay, but they rarely ask me. Drury is apparently unhappy about this situation. Duh. Lisin's cracked foot bone is not keeping him out, he is wearing some kind of crazy special foot shield inside his skate and is playing. Brashear has apparently shaken off the wrinkles and is joining the team.
Where does that leave us? Well, for John Tortorella, it leaves us with enough "NHL bodies" to make a team, without calling anyone up. From what I can piece together, we'll be going with something that approximates the following:
Lisin - Prospal - Gaborik
Higgins - Anisimov - Callahan
Avery - Boyle - Kotalik
Brashear - Voros - Byers
I could be mistaken about Higgins versus Avery and Callahan versus Kotalik; assigning them to the second and third lines was based on my best guesses, everything else is based on reports from today's practice. But my guesses seem pretty reasonable, too.
Finally, in "yeah, what he said!" news, Lundqvist is actually starting to talk about how maybe it's not so great that he gets run over all the goddamn time. From Larry Brooks today (which unrelatedly concludes with some interesting statistics about a depressing second PP unit that Sean Avery can't seem to find his way onto):
---------------
I don't think it's been as bad the last little while, but I know it's been a lot more than last year, and if it continues, of course we have to stand up and respond. As long as we get calls, I don't mind getting hit if we get power plays, but if we don't get the calls, then we have to respond to it.
---------------
Rest assured, the Rangers will have plenty of chances in the coming weeks to respond to it. The question is not "Are people going to stop running Lundqvist?" The question is: when we continue to not get the calls, are the Rangers going to heed the cries, if not of their fans or coach or of reason itself, then of their unquestionably most valuable player game in and game out, and actually start doing something about it? If, in the wake of these injuries, we can't start to stand up for ourselves, it's going to be a very long season.
Very little of that matters presently, though, since tonight, we're only playing a Kovalchuk-less Thrashers, and Lundqvist himself is only probably playing. It's a very good opportunity, however, to see how these guys react to trying to fill the shoes of their missing peers. That's why Torts isn't bringing anyone up: he wants to see what these guys do. "Sometimes this is where you find out about some people," he eloquently explained. If we don't put forth a few big efforts here, I'd expect to see some personnel come in from Hartford within the week or two.
Where does that leave us? Well, for John Tortorella, it leaves us with enough "NHL bodies" to make a team, without calling anyone up. From what I can piece together, we'll be going with something that approximates the following:
Lisin - Prospal - Gaborik
Higgins - Anisimov - Callahan
Avery - Boyle - Kotalik
Brashear - Voros - Byers
I could be mistaken about Higgins versus Avery and Callahan versus Kotalik; assigning them to the second and third lines was based on my best guesses, everything else is based on reports from today's practice. But my guesses seem pretty reasonable, too.
Finally, in "yeah, what he said!" news, Lundqvist is actually starting to talk about how maybe it's not so great that he gets run over all the goddamn time. From Larry Brooks today (which unrelatedly concludes with some interesting statistics about a depressing second PP unit that Sean Avery can't seem to find his way onto):
---------------
I don't think it's been as bad the last little while, but I know it's been a lot more than last year, and if it continues, of course we have to stand up and respond. As long as we get calls, I don't mind getting hit if we get power plays, but if we don't get the calls, then we have to respond to it.
---------------
Rest assured, the Rangers will have plenty of chances in the coming weeks to respond to it. The question is not "Are people going to stop running Lundqvist?" The question is: when we continue to not get the calls, are the Rangers going to heed the cries, if not of their fans or coach or of reason itself, then of their unquestionably most valuable player game in and game out, and actually start doing something about it? If, in the wake of these injuries, we can't start to stand up for ourselves, it's going to be a very long season.
Very little of that matters presently, though, since tonight, we're only playing a Kovalchuk-less Thrashers, and Lundqvist himself is only probably playing. It's a very good opportunity, however, to see how these guys react to trying to fill the shoes of their missing peers. That's why Torts isn't bringing anyone up: he wants to see what these guys do. "Sometimes this is where you find out about some people," he eloquently explained. If we don't put forth a few big efforts here, I'd expect to see some personnel come in from Hartford within the week or two.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Shit, meet fan (fans, meet shit)
I came into the Calgary game very excited, because Torts set up to use literally exactly the lines I wanted him to. Prospal-Dubinsky-Gaborik; Avery-Drury-Callahan; Higgins-Anisimov-Kotalik; Lisin-Boyle-Byers; same D-pairs as always, with Valiquette in goal for a second game in a row (giving Lundqvist 9 days rest between games to heal his whatever-is-mildly-wrong-with-him). Everything went crazy, though, and now everything sucks.
For the first 30 seconds of the game, the first line was on, and that was fine. Then, the second line came on, and that was also fine for about 19 seconds. Then, with the puck 10 feet away and moving in the opposite direction, Curtis Glencross moved in on an unaware Chris Drury who had his head down and elbowed him in the head. Drury, needless to say, did not return to the game. Current reports are that he will be out for an unknown period of time, but the good news is that he flew home with the team, which means they weren't afraid of a flight screwing with his concussion (?).
This is what I'm talking about, people. This is why I draw a distinction between "not well-liked" and "dirty." This piece at Bleacher Report probably isn't, like, worth reading, but it summarizes our issue pretty nicely: there are hits that are part of hockey, and there are hits that aren't. It's very hard for a non-hockey fan to distinguish these, but we hockey fans know the difference. There are hard hits (some of which do sadly cause injury), and there are dirty hits. Hits away from the play, hits when the guy you're hitting isn't looking, or his body is relaxed. These are not hits that try to take someone out of the play, they are hits that try to take someone out of the game.
As a Ranger fan, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, I watched my team battle back hard, play the majority of the game without its top two centers (Dubinsky is out 3-6 weeks with a broken hand from a blocked shot), killed of some really questionable penalties, and outplayed the Flames for the large majority of the 3-1 loss anyway. Effort-wise, after winning those games we deserved to lose in the middle of October, there's something nice about losing a game we deserved to win.
On the other hand, if we're gonna lose 3-1 anyway, where is the retaliation? Yes, yes, "the best retaliation is winning." But we didn't do that. The tone of the game was set early, even earlier than this hit 0:49 in, when some Flame came past the red line and bumped Dubinsky during pre-game warmups. If Glencross was going to be officially so very, very unpenalized for the hit, why wasn't he punished by someone's fists? We need to show some kind of passion, to show that this kind of bullshit, even if it's mysteriously okay with the league, is not going to be okay with us. My father sent me an e-mail the next morning that said exactly what I said to my girlfriend at the time: this is why we have guys like Donald Brashear. Not to go out and take cheap shots like these at guys like Blair Betts, but to make people pay in a physical way for hits like Glencross's. And, ideally, to have the decency to do it like a man, with your victim facing you.
Asked about why there was no retaliation, Avery responded, "You can't. You can't. If the game had become lopsided, there's no question something would have been done. It sucks. It sucks, that's what happens with the instigator rule. It protects guys who are cowards." I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, you need to flatten a guy who does this to your captain. On the other hand, we all know what the story would have been post-game if Avery had gone after Glencross: Avery would have gotten a game misconduct for starting trouble, the Rangers' loss would have been pinned, at least partially, on those penalties, and the league would have investigated both Avery and Glencross for possible future suspensions. Instead, the Rangers buckled down and played a fantastic hockey game, one that certainly could have been a win if not for the fantastic play of Flames goalie Mikka Kiprusoff.
Which brings me to the counterpoint to "as a Ranger fan," which is how I feel as a generic hockey fan. If we ignore what we think the Rangers should or should not have done differently, Avery's comments are pretty telling here. Glencross was able to get away with a dirty hit like this and then skate around for the rest of the game. Avery was afraid to retaliate because that's what the league cracks down on. And it's true: though Glencross received a 3-game suspension (meh!), Avery could easily have been given 17 minutes for going after him "unprovoked." Meanwhile, four officials managed to give zero minutes to the initial hit.
It speaks to a lack of understanding of the game of hockey. You know that difference between hits I was talking about, the one we hockey fans understand? It seems the school of NHL officiating does not understand it. Time and time again, we see that the rules are formulated to really crack down on the stuff that "looks" (to non-hockey fans) like the dangerous stuff. After all, Glencross just hit someone on the ice with his body - hockey players do that all the time, right? That can't possibly be as dangerous as, say, fighting! The question is: are the aptly-pronounced Colin Campbell and his striped squad trying to keep hockey safer and more true-to-form, or are they trying to make it look safer and "more exciting"?
Anyway, we move forward as best we can. As Larry Brooks put it in an informative piece today, "the thinnest position on the roster and in the organization has taken on an anorexic look." Reports on Drury's injury are largely inconclusive, with Steve Zipay going as far as to say he's not even ruled out playing on Thursday (wow). That said, it seems unlikely he'll play then, as you really don't wanna mess with a concussion. Dubinsky's hand, as I said above, will take 3-6 weeks to heal. (Meanwhile, Lundqvist, Lisin, and Gaborik were all resting instead of skating at today's practice - but, hey, Brashear skated.)
That leaves us with Artem Anisimov, as centers go. As of yet, no one has been called up from Hartford, but I can't imagine that lasting. Presumably, Prospal will be moved back to center, and Anisimov will center the second line. Brooks posits that he might be too young, but I still believe that we'll be bringing Grachev up to fill the third line center position and leaving Boyle to center the fourth. Brooks adequately explains that we can't hire any more centers because we can't afford them, but brings one interesting rule to light: we could place Dubi on Long Term Injured Reserve (this requires a minimum of 10 missed games and 24 missed days, both of which should be no problem here), which would free up his salary (which I believe to be $1.7 million, and Brooks claims frees up only $1.2 million, and I don't know why) to be spent against the cap, but, of course, we'd have to stop spending that money as soon as Dubi returns, so, the short story is: we can't hire any more centers because we can't afford them.
The previous sentence was 114 words long.
Here's a fun exercise I just did:
Higgins - Prospal - Gaborik
Avery - Anisimov - Callahan
Lisin - Grachev - Kotalik
Byers - Boyle - Brashear
...guh...the good news is we don't play again until Thursday, and we only have 4 games from now through November 22. So, now's as good a time as any for all those teams beneath us in the standings to catch up to us. We'll take the time to heal?
For the first 30 seconds of the game, the first line was on, and that was fine. Then, the second line came on, and that was also fine for about 19 seconds. Then, with the puck 10 feet away and moving in the opposite direction, Curtis Glencross moved in on an unaware Chris Drury who had his head down and elbowed him in the head. Drury, needless to say, did not return to the game. Current reports are that he will be out for an unknown period of time, but the good news is that he flew home with the team, which means they weren't afraid of a flight screwing with his concussion (?).
This is what I'm talking about, people. This is why I draw a distinction between "not well-liked" and "dirty." This piece at Bleacher Report probably isn't, like, worth reading, but it summarizes our issue pretty nicely: there are hits that are part of hockey, and there are hits that aren't. It's very hard for a non-hockey fan to distinguish these, but we hockey fans know the difference. There are hard hits (some of which do sadly cause injury), and there are dirty hits. Hits away from the play, hits when the guy you're hitting isn't looking, or his body is relaxed. These are not hits that try to take someone out of the play, they are hits that try to take someone out of the game.
As a Ranger fan, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, I watched my team battle back hard, play the majority of the game without its top two centers (Dubinsky is out 3-6 weeks with a broken hand from a blocked shot), killed of some really questionable penalties, and outplayed the Flames for the large majority of the 3-1 loss anyway. Effort-wise, after winning those games we deserved to lose in the middle of October, there's something nice about losing a game we deserved to win.
On the other hand, if we're gonna lose 3-1 anyway, where is the retaliation? Yes, yes, "the best retaliation is winning." But we didn't do that. The tone of the game was set early, even earlier than this hit 0:49 in, when some Flame came past the red line and bumped Dubinsky during pre-game warmups. If Glencross was going to be officially so very, very unpenalized for the hit, why wasn't he punished by someone's fists? We need to show some kind of passion, to show that this kind of bullshit, even if it's mysteriously okay with the league, is not going to be okay with us. My father sent me an e-mail the next morning that said exactly what I said to my girlfriend at the time: this is why we have guys like Donald Brashear. Not to go out and take cheap shots like these at guys like Blair Betts, but to make people pay in a physical way for hits like Glencross's. And, ideally, to have the decency to do it like a man, with your victim facing you.
Asked about why there was no retaliation, Avery responded, "You can't. You can't. If the game had become lopsided, there's no question something would have been done. It sucks. It sucks, that's what happens with the instigator rule. It protects guys who are cowards." I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, you need to flatten a guy who does this to your captain. On the other hand, we all know what the story would have been post-game if Avery had gone after Glencross: Avery would have gotten a game misconduct for starting trouble, the Rangers' loss would have been pinned, at least partially, on those penalties, and the league would have investigated both Avery and Glencross for possible future suspensions. Instead, the Rangers buckled down and played a fantastic hockey game, one that certainly could have been a win if not for the fantastic play of Flames goalie Mikka Kiprusoff.
Which brings me to the counterpoint to "as a Ranger fan," which is how I feel as a generic hockey fan. If we ignore what we think the Rangers should or should not have done differently, Avery's comments are pretty telling here. Glencross was able to get away with a dirty hit like this and then skate around for the rest of the game. Avery was afraid to retaliate because that's what the league cracks down on. And it's true: though Glencross received a 3-game suspension (meh!), Avery could easily have been given 17 minutes for going after him "unprovoked." Meanwhile, four officials managed to give zero minutes to the initial hit.
It speaks to a lack of understanding of the game of hockey. You know that difference between hits I was talking about, the one we hockey fans understand? It seems the school of NHL officiating does not understand it. Time and time again, we see that the rules are formulated to really crack down on the stuff that "looks" (to non-hockey fans) like the dangerous stuff. After all, Glencross just hit someone on the ice with his body - hockey players do that all the time, right? That can't possibly be as dangerous as, say, fighting! The question is: are the aptly-pronounced Colin Campbell and his striped squad trying to keep hockey safer and more true-to-form, or are they trying to make it look safer and "more exciting"?
Anyway, we move forward as best we can. As Larry Brooks put it in an informative piece today, "the thinnest position on the roster and in the organization has taken on an anorexic look." Reports on Drury's injury are largely inconclusive, with Steve Zipay going as far as to say he's not even ruled out playing on Thursday (wow). That said, it seems unlikely he'll play then, as you really don't wanna mess with a concussion. Dubinsky's hand, as I said above, will take 3-6 weeks to heal. (Meanwhile, Lundqvist, Lisin, and Gaborik were all resting instead of skating at today's practice - but, hey, Brashear skated.)
That leaves us with Artem Anisimov, as centers go. As of yet, no one has been called up from Hartford, but I can't imagine that lasting. Presumably, Prospal will be moved back to center, and Anisimov will center the second line. Brooks posits that he might be too young, but I still believe that we'll be bringing Grachev up to fill the third line center position and leaving Boyle to center the fourth. Brooks adequately explains that we can't hire any more centers because we can't afford them, but brings one interesting rule to light: we could place Dubi on Long Term Injured Reserve (this requires a minimum of 10 missed games and 24 missed days, both of which should be no problem here), which would free up his salary (which I believe to be $1.7 million, and Brooks claims frees up only $1.2 million, and I don't know why) to be spent against the cap, but, of course, we'd have to stop spending that money as soon as Dubi returns, so, the short story is: we can't hire any more centers because we can't afford them.
The previous sentence was 114 words long.
Here's a fun exercise I just did:
Higgins - Prospal - Gaborik
Avery - Anisimov - Callahan
Lisin - Grachev - Kotalik
Byers - Boyle - Brashear
...guh...the good news is we don't play again until Thursday, and we only have 4 games from now through November 22. So, now's as good a time as any for all those teams beneath us in the standings to catch up to us. We'll take the time to heal?
Thursday, November 5, 2009
As expected
Steve Zipay confirms: Valiquette will start tonight, Lisin is in, on Drury's line, and Brashear is out, leaving the 4th line as Avery-Boyle-Voros. Exactly zero people were shocked.
Hey, you do remember that Tom Renney is one of Pat Quinn's Assistant Coaches in Edmonton, right? If not, take a quick saunter to his bio. They could probably have stood to use a less...confused picture of him?
I want a really big win tonight.
Hey, you do remember that Tom Renney is one of Pat Quinn's Assistant Coaches in Edmonton, right? If not, take a quick saunter to his bio. They could probably have stood to use a less...confused picture of him?
I want a really big win tonight.
Punishments and moves forward
Tuesday night: super-brawl. Thursday morning: punishments doled out. So, under an automatic NHL rule, Byers, for receiving an instigation minor in the final five minutes of a game, also receives a one-game suspension (and his coach gets fined). This is an automatic suspension, which you'll recall from when Gary Bettman decided it didn't apply to Evgeni Malkin back in the Spring. Well, this was just some regular season game involving some team that hasn't been branded the Commisioner's "model franchise," so the rules were applied as normal: Byers won't be eligible to play tonight in Edmonton.
On the flip side, Shane O'Brien was summoned to a disciplinary hearing and awarded a not-at-all-automatic one-game suspension - you know, for spearing Avery with his stick while they were both on their benches. Avery, reached for comment, smiled and said, "I'm surprised they haven't called me for being in the area."
Without Byers, we're down to 13 potential forward, two of whom are Enver Lisin and Donald Brashear. The good news is that Lisin skated at practice today, so he may actually be in the lineup. Failing that, they will probably dust off Donald Brashear, throw in some WD-40, and see if he's still scary.
Gaborik and Lundqvist were both out from practice today with minor bumps and bruises. Both should be able to play tonight, though it seems to me to be a real good time for Torts to throw Valiquette into the lineup instead.
After my long talk with him last night, John Tortorella has agreed to recreate Prospal-Dubinsky-Gaborik as the first line. Torts also said he really liked Higgins-Anisimov-Kotalik, so we may see that tonight as well. That would leave Drury and Callahan looking for a left wing, a job for which I would choose Sean Avery, but that Lisin will probably fill if he's healthy enough. This would leave Avery-Boyle-Voros as the likely fourth line, or, if Lisin doesn't make the cut, and Avery is up on Drury's line, Brashear-Boyle-Voros. It seems like we won't be flying anyone like Parenteau or Grachev out to deal with the lack of Byers (it would be silly to).
I like these line ideas, significantly more than I like the stuff we've been playing with lately. I can only hope they work tonight, so we get to keep them. 9:30, at Rexall Place, Let's Go Rangers!
On the flip side, Shane O'Brien was summoned to a disciplinary hearing and awarded a not-at-all-automatic one-game suspension - you know, for spearing Avery with his stick while they were both on their benches. Avery, reached for comment, smiled and said, "I'm surprised they haven't called me for being in the area."
Without Byers, we're down to 13 potential forward, two of whom are Enver Lisin and Donald Brashear. The good news is that Lisin skated at practice today, so he may actually be in the lineup. Failing that, they will probably dust off Donald Brashear, throw in some WD-40, and see if he's still scary.
Gaborik and Lundqvist were both out from practice today with minor bumps and bruises. Both should be able to play tonight, though it seems to me to be a real good time for Torts to throw Valiquette into the lineup instead.
After my long talk with him last night, John Tortorella has agreed to recreate Prospal-Dubinsky-Gaborik as the first line. Torts also said he really liked Higgins-Anisimov-Kotalik, so we may see that tonight as well. That would leave Drury and Callahan looking for a left wing, a job for which I would choose Sean Avery, but that Lisin will probably fill if he's healthy enough. This would leave Avery-Boyle-Voros as the likely fourth line, or, if Lisin doesn't make the cut, and Avery is up on Drury's line, Brashear-Boyle-Voros. It seems like we won't be flying anyone like Parenteau or Grachev out to deal with the lack of Byers (it would be silly to).
I like these line ideas, significantly more than I like the stuff we've been playing with lately. I can only hope they work tonight, so we get to keep them. 9:30, at Rexall Place, Let's Go Rangers!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
What the hell just happened in Vancouver?
Not much to say about our other games last week. Hoping to post more frequently, now Halloween has come and gone. We didn't show up at the Coliseum, and we got badly outplayed for much of the game in Minnesota (for which a quarter of our regular forwards literally didn't show up). Coach's remarks were largely "no, this isn't a lack of Gaborik, everyone needs to just suck less." Then we beat the Bruins 1-0 in a game that bored the hell out of my hung-over ass. I remember, last season, when watching Ranger games felt like an obligation. Sunday, I had flashbacks.
So, let's jump right to last night. With our lineup largely reconstituted (scratches were Enver "no, really, someone tell me what I'm missing about this guy" Lisin and Donald "$1.4 million dollars, really?" Brashear), Tortorella made a move I loved and put Higgins up on the top line with Prospal and Gaborik. For some reason, he still can't get over his "three-Americans-who-check-people" line of Avery-Dubi-Cally, leaving Drury with Kotalik and Freshman-hottie-of-the-week Dane Byers. (The fourth line, for completion's sake, was Anisimov centering Voros and Boyle.)
Oh, and Prospal was finally named Alternate Captain. I'm right about everything.
The Canucks, even without Roberto "my contract looks like a parody of a contract" Luongo, are a very strong defensive team. We knew this was gonna be a hard team to try to get back strong offensive momentum against. In fact, even Joe Micheletti, pre-game, said "the Canucks are going to try to win this game 1-0." And so, that strong defense, combined with the Rangers resent propensity for not pushing the issue (ever), led to being outshot 10-4 in the first period, after which we were down 1-0 and I was bored again.
About 6 or 7 minutes into the second, we started to pick up our game. By then, lines were started to shift around somewhat. I saw Callahan back on Drury's line. While the Canucks' best defense was focused on shutting down the Prospal-Gaborik-whoever line, Kotalik surfaced as our most promising offensive threat, taking a number of hard shots at the net, like we pay him to do. We continued to battle hard on into the third (wherein Dubinsky earned the glorious reunion of Prospal-himself-Gaborik), and I started to not be bored: it was really a good game.
Also, every day, even when we're playing bad, boring hockey, I like Matt Gilroy a little more. Congratulations to Michael Del Zotto, who was named NHL's rookie of the month yesterday (before having a mediocre-to-poor game last night), but I really can't wait until Gilroy comes into his own.
And then, 4:21 into the third, everything went crazy. First of all, early in the third, the crowd was chanting "Rangers suck!", which was weird, for a 1-0 game against a team we play like once a year (in an arena we haven't won in since Wayne Gretzky scored a hat trick to beat Tom Renney's Canucks, starring Mark Messier, on my 14th birthday). Then, after some questionable pushing and shoving between Gaborik and Bieksa (I think it was Bieksa), there was a line change at a stoppage of play, which developed into a crazy bajillion-person brawl. Because of the line change, more than 5 skaters were out for each team. It was awesome. It lasted like 5 solid minutes before they got everything broken up, going through about 3 "oops, we thought everything was under control and then something else happened" phases, including Shane O'Brien attacking Avery with his stick from his bench. I loved it the way I loved the They Might Be Giants show I saw last month: it was the kind of totally awesome thing that I am too young to have seen when it used to happen all the time.
All said and done, the scrum(s) earned 52 penalty minutes which came in the form of 5 10-minute misconducts (Byers and Girardi; Bieksa, Burrows, and O'Brien) and a 2-minute roughing minor to Ryan Kesler. The brouhaha did exactly what we wanted it to: acted as another big push in a momentum shift that hadn't quite worked yet. On the ensuing power play, Chris Higgins (finally!) scored, and as he looked to the heavens mouthing what appeared to be "Thank Christ!", the game was tied. On top of which, Bieksa mouthed off at some official after the goal and earned himself another two.
We didn't capitalize on that minor, but all of a sudden there were 11 and a half minutes left in a fast-paced, exciting, tied hockey game. Oh, um, but, Michal Rozsival's on our side. So after a weak play by Del Zotto, the puck was coming innocently down near Hank's left side, with Rozsie a step ahead of Kesler. Somehow, between Rozsival's skill level and Kesler's, Kesler managerd to get past him and get to the puck first, skating behind the net and leaving Rozsival in the dust. Then, Kesler flew past DZ, and Rozsival stood in front of the net, which was a great place for him to watch and do nothing as Rypien recieved Kesler's feed a foot away and regained the lead. The game had been tied for a total of 2:24.
The deal-sealing third Canuck goal was on a power play from a very, very questionable hooking call on Rozsival a few minutes later, though even if Rozsie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (story of his life?), I can't imagine it endeared him to Torts any further. Empty-netter at 18:36, big brawl at 18:50, Rangers lose 4-1. So, it wasn't pretty. But at least it was fun for a while.
Torts, keep Callahan and Dubi on different lines, keep Lisin off the top line, keep Brashear scratched, and fire Rozsival, out of a cannon, into the sun. Just some suggestions. Western Canadian road trip part two is Thursday night in Edmonton. Is it time to get things rolling again? When do we start getting concerned? Well, let's look at our two 8-game sets. Since outscoring our opponents 32-15 to start the season 7-1, we have given up 28 goals and scored only 19 in going 2-5-1. Tomorrow's as good a time as any to win a game 9-2.
So, let's jump right to last night. With our lineup largely reconstituted (scratches were Enver "no, really, someone tell me what I'm missing about this guy" Lisin and Donald "$1.4 million dollars, really?" Brashear), Tortorella made a move I loved and put Higgins up on the top line with Prospal and Gaborik. For some reason, he still can't get over his "three-Americans-who-check-people" line of Avery-Dubi-Cally, leaving Drury with Kotalik and Freshman-hottie-of-the-week Dane Byers. (The fourth line, for completion's sake, was Anisimov centering Voros and Boyle.)
Oh, and Prospal was finally named Alternate Captain. I'm right about everything.
The Canucks, even without Roberto "my contract looks like a parody of a contract" Luongo, are a very strong defensive team. We knew this was gonna be a hard team to try to get back strong offensive momentum against. In fact, even Joe Micheletti, pre-game, said "the Canucks are going to try to win this game 1-0." And so, that strong defense, combined with the Rangers resent propensity for not pushing the issue (ever), led to being outshot 10-4 in the first period, after which we were down 1-0 and I was bored again.
About 6 or 7 minutes into the second, we started to pick up our game. By then, lines were started to shift around somewhat. I saw Callahan back on Drury's line. While the Canucks' best defense was focused on shutting down the Prospal-Gaborik-whoever line, Kotalik surfaced as our most promising offensive threat, taking a number of hard shots at the net, like we pay him to do. We continued to battle hard on into the third (wherein Dubinsky earned the glorious reunion of Prospal-himself-Gaborik), and I started to not be bored: it was really a good game.
Also, every day, even when we're playing bad, boring hockey, I like Matt Gilroy a little more. Congratulations to Michael Del Zotto, who was named NHL's rookie of the month yesterday (before having a mediocre-to-poor game last night), but I really can't wait until Gilroy comes into his own.
And then, 4:21 into the third, everything went crazy. First of all, early in the third, the crowd was chanting "Rangers suck!", which was weird, for a 1-0 game against a team we play like once a year (in an arena we haven't won in since Wayne Gretzky scored a hat trick to beat Tom Renney's Canucks, starring Mark Messier, on my 14th birthday). Then, after some questionable pushing and shoving between Gaborik and Bieksa (I think it was Bieksa), there was a line change at a stoppage of play, which developed into a crazy bajillion-person brawl. Because of the line change, more than 5 skaters were out for each team. It was awesome. It lasted like 5 solid minutes before they got everything broken up, going through about 3 "oops, we thought everything was under control and then something else happened" phases, including Shane O'Brien attacking Avery with his stick from his bench. I loved it the way I loved the They Might Be Giants show I saw last month: it was the kind of totally awesome thing that I am too young to have seen when it used to happen all the time.
All said and done, the scrum(s) earned 52 penalty minutes which came in the form of 5 10-minute misconducts (Byers and Girardi; Bieksa, Burrows, and O'Brien) and a 2-minute roughing minor to Ryan Kesler. The brouhaha did exactly what we wanted it to: acted as another big push in a momentum shift that hadn't quite worked yet. On the ensuing power play, Chris Higgins (finally!) scored, and as he looked to the heavens mouthing what appeared to be "Thank Christ!", the game was tied. On top of which, Bieksa mouthed off at some official after the goal and earned himself another two.
We didn't capitalize on that minor, but all of a sudden there were 11 and a half minutes left in a fast-paced, exciting, tied hockey game. Oh, um, but, Michal Rozsival's on our side. So after a weak play by Del Zotto, the puck was coming innocently down near Hank's left side, with Rozsie a step ahead of Kesler. Somehow, between Rozsival's skill level and Kesler's, Kesler managerd to get past him and get to the puck first, skating behind the net and leaving Rozsival in the dust. Then, Kesler flew past DZ, and Rozsival stood in front of the net, which was a great place for him to watch and do nothing as Rypien recieved Kesler's feed a foot away and regained the lead. The game had been tied for a total of 2:24.
The deal-sealing third Canuck goal was on a power play from a very, very questionable hooking call on Rozsival a few minutes later, though even if Rozsie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (story of his life?), I can't imagine it endeared him to Torts any further. Empty-netter at 18:36, big brawl at 18:50, Rangers lose 4-1. So, it wasn't pretty. But at least it was fun for a while.
Torts, keep Callahan and Dubi on different lines, keep Lisin off the top line, keep Brashear scratched, and fire Rozsival, out of a cannon, into the sun. Just some suggestions. Western Canadian road trip part two is Thursday night in Edmonton. Is it time to get things rolling again? When do we start getting concerned? Well, let's look at our two 8-game sets. Since outscoring our opponents 32-15 to start the season 7-1, we have given up 28 goals and scored only 19 in going 2-5-1. Tomorrow's as good a time as any to win a game 9-2.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The lines
It started with penalties. Offensive zone penalties. Lots of them. If I had a statistics department that wasn't me, right now, they'd be compiling numbers to figure out how the Rangers rank against the rest of the league in four different categories: penalty minutes, number of penalties, offensive zone penalty minutes, and number of offensive zone penalties (the latter two not including fights or misconducts). Then they'd provide me with the most impressive-sounding of those stats, and I'd reproduce them for you. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do that comprehensive research, so I'm trusting my instincts and saying we rank pretty high, and you should just trust that and move on.
After the benchings of Dubinsky and Higgins in Montréal, Tortorella made all the lines go crazy. Sure, Dubinsky hasn't been playing fantastic hockey lately - certainly not hockey that warrants his summer contract fiasco (which I'm sure Torts hasn't forgotten) - but no one really has. So, fine, you bench him, along with Higgins, whose thinking too hard has become an real problem lately. Then, you decide that he's not currently fit to be a first line center. Um, maybe, but, like, we're a dozen games into the season. Maybe let's give him something of a chance to tighten up his game?
Nope. So Prospal moves to center, leaving a space on left wing. Then, why stop there? Callahan hasn't been as hot as he was in the beginning of the season, let's push him down to the third line along with Dubi and Higgins. Or is that the second line now? Wait! We also like Lisin! Let's let him go back to his natural position at left wing, and move Boyle to the wing, and stick Anisimov on the 4th line!
Huh?
Lisin - Prospal - Gaborik
Higgins - Dubinsky - Callahan
Avery - Drury - Kotalik
Brashear - Anisimov - Boyle
These are the lines that beat the Coyotes 5-2 Monday night. I'm not here to tell Tortorella how to do his job. But damned if I don't get this. Yeah, Lisin's been fine, but he can't help but look outclassed on a line with Prospal and Gaborik. Even if you wanna push Dubi off that line, do you really think Lisin looks better there then Sean "get the hell out of vinnie's way now kthx" Avery would? Or maybe Christopher "i could use a scoring spark" Higgins? And what on earth is a line like Higgins - Dubi - Cally gonna do: skate around the ice hitting people off the puck and pass to each other for 5 minutes waiting for one of them to become the sniper? And how do you expect Artem Anisimov to come into his own as a playmaking forward when you give him a right wing with the body of a gorilla and a left wing with the brain of one?
Gaborik and Prospal (the latter of whom I still think deserves an A on his chest) are playing great hockey together. I love it. Drury, too, has been largely fantastic. Everyone else could stand to pick their games back up. In particular, besides the obvious Dubinsky and Higgins, I'd like to see more from Callahan and Avery. These are the guys that aren't the big marquee players, but that tend to be game-changers when they're at the top of theirs.
On defense, the biggest question has been Staal, who has been mediocre at absolute best lately. Yes, Redden has improved somewhat. Yes, Del Zotto score many point. Gilroy will still come into his own as a good defensemen, just give it time. But in the meanwhile, if the Staal-Girardi pair's better half is playing at the level he's been playing at, our average defenseman has dropped to "second or more likely third pair" caliber. This is not good news.
This drop-off in our best defensemen and our game-changing power forwards, along with the offensive zone penalties, explains what's been happening to us: we're losing the neutral zone, in both directions. When we try to break out, our Dubis and Callys should be pushing through people, not getting stripped in the neutral zone. This causes us to overcompensate and take penalties in our zone. When we're trying to keep pressure on, our high men (like Staal) need to be coming in to the puck, not skating past it. This causes us to overcompensate and take offensive zone penalties. Some commentator paraphrased some coach the other day, saying something that sounded like a less well-worded "he who wins the neutral zone shall win the day." I wish I could quote some famous hockey person has having said exactly that, 'cause it would be totally appropriate for us right now.
No idea what tonight's lines will be. Gaborik's definitely out, Parenteau in. Also, Brashear is out again (still think he was an upgrade from Colton Orr?), so I assume we'll see Voros again. Since we brought in Parenteau rather than Grachev, I assume Prospal will stay at center, with Dubi still down on the third (second?) line. But who will he be centering, Parenteau and Lisin?? Maybe Callahan will be back up there? I have no idea. We'll see, in 45 minutes, at the Coliseum. Let's go Rangers!
After the benchings of Dubinsky and Higgins in Montréal, Tortorella made all the lines go crazy. Sure, Dubinsky hasn't been playing fantastic hockey lately - certainly not hockey that warrants his summer contract fiasco (which I'm sure Torts hasn't forgotten) - but no one really has. So, fine, you bench him, along with Higgins, whose thinking too hard has become an real problem lately. Then, you decide that he's not currently fit to be a first line center. Um, maybe, but, like, we're a dozen games into the season. Maybe let's give him something of a chance to tighten up his game?
Nope. So Prospal moves to center, leaving a space on left wing. Then, why stop there? Callahan hasn't been as hot as he was in the beginning of the season, let's push him down to the third line along with Dubi and Higgins. Or is that the second line now? Wait! We also like Lisin! Let's let him go back to his natural position at left wing, and move Boyle to the wing, and stick Anisimov on the 4th line!
Huh?
Lisin - Prospal - Gaborik
Higgins - Dubinsky - Callahan
Avery - Drury - Kotalik
Brashear - Anisimov - Boyle
These are the lines that beat the Coyotes 5-2 Monday night. I'm not here to tell Tortorella how to do his job. But damned if I don't get this. Yeah, Lisin's been fine, but he can't help but look outclassed on a line with Prospal and Gaborik. Even if you wanna push Dubi off that line, do you really think Lisin looks better there then Sean "get the hell out of vinnie's way now kthx" Avery would? Or maybe Christopher "i could use a scoring spark" Higgins? And what on earth is a line like Higgins - Dubi - Cally gonna do: skate around the ice hitting people off the puck and pass to each other for 5 minutes waiting for one of them to become the sniper? And how do you expect Artem Anisimov to come into his own as a playmaking forward when you give him a right wing with the body of a gorilla and a left wing with the brain of one?
Gaborik and Prospal (the latter of whom I still think deserves an A on his chest) are playing great hockey together. I love it. Drury, too, has been largely fantastic. Everyone else could stand to pick their games back up. In particular, besides the obvious Dubinsky and Higgins, I'd like to see more from Callahan and Avery. These are the guys that aren't the big marquee players, but that tend to be game-changers when they're at the top of theirs.
On defense, the biggest question has been Staal, who has been mediocre at absolute best lately. Yes, Redden has improved somewhat. Yes, Del Zotto score many point. Gilroy will still come into his own as a good defensemen, just give it time. But in the meanwhile, if the Staal-Girardi pair's better half is playing at the level he's been playing at, our average defenseman has dropped to "second or more likely third pair" caliber. This is not good news.
This drop-off in our best defensemen and our game-changing power forwards, along with the offensive zone penalties, explains what's been happening to us: we're losing the neutral zone, in both directions. When we try to break out, our Dubis and Callys should be pushing through people, not getting stripped in the neutral zone. This causes us to overcompensate and take penalties in our zone. When we're trying to keep pressure on, our high men (like Staal) need to be coming in to the puck, not skating past it. This causes us to overcompensate and take offensive zone penalties. Some commentator paraphrased some coach the other day, saying something that sounded like a less well-worded "he who wins the neutral zone shall win the day." I wish I could quote some famous hockey person has having said exactly that, 'cause it would be totally appropriate for us right now.
No idea what tonight's lines will be. Gaborik's definitely out, Parenteau in. Also, Brashear is out again (still think he was an upgrade from Colton Orr?), so I assume we'll see Voros again. Since we brought in Parenteau rather than Grachev, I assume Prospal will stay at center, with Dubi still down on the third (second?) line. But who will he be centering, Parenteau and Lisin?? Maybe Callahan will be back up there? I have no idea. We'll see, in 45 minutes, at the Coliseum. Let's go Rangers!
The slide
I don't want you to think I only post when we win. It's just that Halloween means busy times, I have costumes to make!
Since I posted that our streak was nearing its end and our slide was beginning, we lost 3 in a row, before beating Prucha and Korpikoski in their return to MSG. What happened? Nothing really surprising. Reality came back and reminded us that despite our newfound prolific scoring, we're not actually the top team in the NHL right now. A bunch of 20-year-olds skating really fast only works for so long.
Specifically, we knew we weren't playing great hockey, just getting the big goal at the right time. The Sharks game was the low point, giving up 7 goals (although the silver lining is that we scored 3 ourselves). In the Devils game, we found ourselves on the other end of what we're used to dealing out. After a weak first period, we came back and tied it 2-2 after 2, then continued to play a pretty good third period against a team that also played a pretty good period: they got the big goals at the right times, we didn't, we lost 4-2. Fine. This happens. My only issue, of course, was that it was the Devils. I think if we went 18-64 on the season, beating the Devils, Islanders, and Penguins all 6 times each, I'd call it a good season.
Then, the Habs game. The Habs game, the Habs game. This, to me, was the game that screamed trouble the most. We had our big loss to the Sharks, then we lost to our big rivals in a hard-fought game, now the 2-game slide was going to Montréal so we could meet Scott Gomez and Paul Mara and they could meet Chris Higgins. After a little over half a hockey game, we were up 4-2, and we had each only gone off for one minor penalty. It was the first time this season I really recall feeling like we inexcusably took a step back. Forgetting that we had just lost 2 in a row by an aggregate 11-5, forgetting that we were playing a pretty good hockey team and needed some discipline, forgetting how fucking scary a line of Gionta-Gomez-Cammalleri is, we decided this game was mostly in the bag. One 5-on-3 later, it was a one-goal game, and with 1:02 left in the second, it was tied.
Sure, we held them off for the third. We didn't let them do what they were always inevitably going to do until overtime, so we kept a point (half a "W" for playing half a hockey game). But we just did not finish playing this hockey game, and the Habs got a win because of it.
So, yes, after 3 losses, we came back to the Garden and won 5-2. But does anyone really believe that game put us "back on track"? The Coyotes outplayed us for swaths of Monday night's contest, and as much as I like them (we watched the Phoenix broadcast, and when Prucha winked at the camera pre-game, I almost cried), they really don't have a fantastic defensive squad. It's nice, but not particularly thrilling, when Gaborik finds the back of the cage twice in a game against a team like this. I'm not saying I'm unhappy about it, I'm just saying it hardly heralds a Thin Lizzy montage.
Tonight, the Islanders. News time. We will likely be playing without Marian Gaborik, who you'll note was missing for the end of the Coyotes game, following some sort of undisclosed "lower body injury" (but don't worry - "it has nothing to do with his hip or his groin, we swear"). P.A. Parenteau (remember him?) will be getting the call up, which is fine, 'cause he's totally the same caliber of player as Gaborik. Also, Lundqvist is fine, following a minor fender-bender.
Personnel review coming. But first: you have got to check this shit out.
Since I posted that our streak was nearing its end and our slide was beginning, we lost 3 in a row, before beating Prucha and Korpikoski in their return to MSG. What happened? Nothing really surprising. Reality came back and reminded us that despite our newfound prolific scoring, we're not actually the top team in the NHL right now. A bunch of 20-year-olds skating really fast only works for so long.
Specifically, we knew we weren't playing great hockey, just getting the big goal at the right time. The Sharks game was the low point, giving up 7 goals (although the silver lining is that we scored 3 ourselves). In the Devils game, we found ourselves on the other end of what we're used to dealing out. After a weak first period, we came back and tied it 2-2 after 2, then continued to play a pretty good third period against a team that also played a pretty good period: they got the big goals at the right times, we didn't, we lost 4-2. Fine. This happens. My only issue, of course, was that it was the Devils. I think if we went 18-64 on the season, beating the Devils, Islanders, and Penguins all 6 times each, I'd call it a good season.
Then, the Habs game. The Habs game, the Habs game. This, to me, was the game that screamed trouble the most. We had our big loss to the Sharks, then we lost to our big rivals in a hard-fought game, now the 2-game slide was going to Montréal so we could meet Scott Gomez and Paul Mara and they could meet Chris Higgins. After a little over half a hockey game, we were up 4-2, and we had each only gone off for one minor penalty. It was the first time this season I really recall feeling like we inexcusably took a step back. Forgetting that we had just lost 2 in a row by an aggregate 11-5, forgetting that we were playing a pretty good hockey team and needed some discipline, forgetting how fucking scary a line of Gionta-Gomez-Cammalleri is, we decided this game was mostly in the bag. One 5-on-3 later, it was a one-goal game, and with 1:02 left in the second, it was tied.
Sure, we held them off for the third. We didn't let them do what they were always inevitably going to do until overtime, so we kept a point (half a "W" for playing half a hockey game). But we just did not finish playing this hockey game, and the Habs got a win because of it.
So, yes, after 3 losses, we came back to the Garden and won 5-2. But does anyone really believe that game put us "back on track"? The Coyotes outplayed us for swaths of Monday night's contest, and as much as I like them (we watched the Phoenix broadcast, and when Prucha winked at the camera pre-game, I almost cried), they really don't have a fantastic defensive squad. It's nice, but not particularly thrilling, when Gaborik finds the back of the cage twice in a game against a team like this. I'm not saying I'm unhappy about it, I'm just saying it hardly heralds a Thin Lizzy montage.
Tonight, the Islanders. News time. We will likely be playing without Marian Gaborik, who you'll note was missing for the end of the Coyotes game, following some sort of undisclosed "lower body injury" (but don't worry - "it has nothing to do with his hip or his groin, we swear"). P.A. Parenteau (remember him?) will be getting the call up, which is fine, 'cause he's totally the same caliber of player as Gaborik. Also, Lundqvist is fine, following a minor fender-bender.
Personnel review coming. But first: you have got to check this shit out.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Stumbling past the only team in the league worse than the Islanders
Okay, so, the good news is that we won another one on Saturday night. The fun part was listening to the disgruntled Toronto fans boo the hell out of their second-rate neo-Flyers of a squad, justifiably angrier at their home team's own 0-6-1 start than at our performance in a modest 4-1 win. But for a team with numbers as good as our own so far, the bad news is surprisingly the way we played this game.
In the big picture, we're 7-1 to start the season, we've won 7 in a row, we've outscored our opponents by an aggregate 32-15 (no team has scored more (only the Oilers and Thrashers are on pace to tie us in 8 games), and of the teams that have allowed fewer than 15, only the Coyotes are on pace to allow that few in 8 games), we haven't even trailed since 8:09 of the third when Gaborik tied the Caps on October 8, and the first period that night remains the only period of hockey we've lost other than the second period of opening night. Hell, since losing on opening night, in 420 minutes of hockey, we have only trailed at all for a total of 30:39, and never by more than a goal.
But in what Michael Obernauer rightly refers to as "eerily similar" to last season's start, something feels wrong. It started when we faced the Leafs the first time, in the second period. After we worked so diligently to beat the Ducks 3-0 and were up 3-2 the very next night, it was easy to excuse a tired team for taking a "good-enough" lapse in the second before exploding for 4 in the third. But since then, we submitted an inappropriately low effort in winning two more by an aggregate 8-3. We were outshot 71-49 across the two games, through which we didn't even outshoot our opponents in a single period.
Now, as I said a few days ago, I know these are kids and energy is going to peter out. But there's a mental component here, too, and that needs to be improved. When Lundqvist is so obviously the only guy keeping you in these games during your vapid periods, and Leafs are so obviously taking runs at him, and the referees are so obviously ignoring said runs, it's time to send Hank a thank you card in the form of violence toward others.
There are positive takeaways. Obviously, the 4 points we took away from these two games are pretty positive. It's nice that we can steal wins even when we're sliding, against a good team and a desperate (if pathetic) team. Moreover, there was some promise near the end of the second and through the third of Saturday night's game, where we started to turn on some speed and play in the Toronto zone. But, again, that's not all that promising; it was only Toronto.
I guess the point is, like we said at this time last year, this is fun, but if we keep playing like this, it can't last. That's the bottom line. Adding up to the bottom line, however, is a lot of more positive ingredients than those that added up to the same line last season. These include a radically more potent group of forwards and a young and excited group of talented defensemen, paired with the same great goalies. That's part of why our 10-2-1 October that kicked off last season saw us outscore our opponents 36-25, winning 6 of the 10 by one goal, including 2 shootout wins, while this season, we've won by a total 32-15, winning 4 of the 7 by three or more.
Funny story. Going 6-1-1 through their first 8 games, Tom Renney's "defense-first, defense always" squad, backdropped by a stellar Henrik Lundqvist, gave up only 14 goals. Going 7-1 through their first 8, Tortorella's "always be attacking, safe is death, we'll deal with the odd-man rushes as they come" group, backed by the same Lundqvist, has given up only 15. Kinda makes you wonder what all that focus on the defense was buying us, huh?
Chris Higgins is starting to get very pissed off at his lack of scoring. I'm fuzzy on how appropriate that is, even for a top six forward, if you're playing as well as he's been playing otherwise and your team is averaging 4 goals a game. Whatever it is, Torts is ready to help develop a spark there. For tonight's game against the Sharks (and possibly the foreseeable future), Higgins will be down on Anisimov's line, and Avery will be up with Drury and Cally. I think it's a good move. I'd like to see Avery have more of an effect, and I'd like to see Higgins bring some offense to the third line - I think Avery-Drury-Callahan and Higgins-Anisimov-Kotalik is an upgrade for both lines, actually.
Our nine games with Del Zotto are almost up. Steve Zipay put it best: "For those knuckleheads who were counting down: It'll be nine games into the season tomorrow. Yeah, Del Zotto's going back to juniors. 'Bout as much chance of me being voted Miss Congeniality..."
Sharks, Heatley and all, at the Garden tonight at 7. Our chance to go to 8 in a row. Or, to continue sliding into a loss. Tomorrow night, the Pens have the chance to win their eighth of the season (go Blues!). Leafs are off until Saturday, by which time the Isles will have had two chances to make the Leafs the only winless team (go 'Canes and Habs!). That's all for now.
In the big picture, we're 7-1 to start the season, we've won 7 in a row, we've outscored our opponents by an aggregate 32-15 (no team has scored more (only the Oilers and Thrashers are on pace to tie us in 8 games), and of the teams that have allowed fewer than 15, only the Coyotes are on pace to allow that few in 8 games), we haven't even trailed since 8:09 of the third when Gaborik tied the Caps on October 8, and the first period that night remains the only period of hockey we've lost other than the second period of opening night. Hell, since losing on opening night, in 420 minutes of hockey, we have only trailed at all for a total of 30:39, and never by more than a goal.
But in what Michael Obernauer rightly refers to as "eerily similar" to last season's start, something feels wrong. It started when we faced the Leafs the first time, in the second period. After we worked so diligently to beat the Ducks 3-0 and were up 3-2 the very next night, it was easy to excuse a tired team for taking a "good-enough" lapse in the second before exploding for 4 in the third. But since then, we submitted an inappropriately low effort in winning two more by an aggregate 8-3. We were outshot 71-49 across the two games, through which we didn't even outshoot our opponents in a single period.
Now, as I said a few days ago, I know these are kids and energy is going to peter out. But there's a mental component here, too, and that needs to be improved. When Lundqvist is so obviously the only guy keeping you in these games during your vapid periods, and Leafs are so obviously taking runs at him, and the referees are so obviously ignoring said runs, it's time to send Hank a thank you card in the form of violence toward others.
There are positive takeaways. Obviously, the 4 points we took away from these two games are pretty positive. It's nice that we can steal wins even when we're sliding, against a good team and a desperate (if pathetic) team. Moreover, there was some promise near the end of the second and through the third of Saturday night's game, where we started to turn on some speed and play in the Toronto zone. But, again, that's not all that promising; it was only Toronto.
I guess the point is, like we said at this time last year, this is fun, but if we keep playing like this, it can't last. That's the bottom line. Adding up to the bottom line, however, is a lot of more positive ingredients than those that added up to the same line last season. These include a radically more potent group of forwards and a young and excited group of talented defensemen, paired with the same great goalies. That's part of why our 10-2-1 October that kicked off last season saw us outscore our opponents 36-25, winning 6 of the 10 by one goal, including 2 shootout wins, while this season, we've won by a total 32-15, winning 4 of the 7 by three or more.
Funny story. Going 6-1-1 through their first 8 games, Tom Renney's "defense-first, defense always" squad, backdropped by a stellar Henrik Lundqvist, gave up only 14 goals. Going 7-1 through their first 8, Tortorella's "always be attacking, safe is death, we'll deal with the odd-man rushes as they come" group, backed by the same Lundqvist, has given up only 15. Kinda makes you wonder what all that focus on the defense was buying us, huh?
Chris Higgins is starting to get very pissed off at his lack of scoring. I'm fuzzy on how appropriate that is, even for a top six forward, if you're playing as well as he's been playing otherwise and your team is averaging 4 goals a game. Whatever it is, Torts is ready to help develop a spark there. For tonight's game against the Sharks (and possibly the foreseeable future), Higgins will be down on Anisimov's line, and Avery will be up with Drury and Cally. I think it's a good move. I'd like to see Avery have more of an effect, and I'd like to see Higgins bring some offense to the third line - I think Avery-Drury-Callahan and Higgins-Anisimov-Kotalik is an upgrade for both lines, actually.
Our nine games with Del Zotto are almost up. Steve Zipay put it best: "For those knuckleheads who were counting down: It'll be nine games into the season tomorrow. Yeah, Del Zotto's going back to juniors. 'Bout as much chance of me being voted Miss Congeniality..."
Sharks, Heatley and all, at the Garden tonight at 7. Our chance to go to 8 in a row. Or, to continue sliding into a loss. Tomorrow night, the Pens have the chance to win their eighth of the season (go Blues!). Leafs are off until Saturday, by which time the Isles will have had two chances to make the Leafs the only winless team (go 'Canes and Habs!). That's all for now.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Rangers 4, Kings 2
Well, last night we did something that's probably been a long time coming: we were playing our third game in four nights, against an opponent with a similarly impressive record to our own, and leading 2-1 after 1, we got tired. We just stopped winning battles, all over the ice. There was a timeout in the middle of the second that didn't bounce us back. There were special teams efforts that didn't bounce us back. There was a second intermission that didn't bounce us back. We played almost all of the last two periods in our own zone, taking 6 minor penalties (3 by forwards) across these two periods (to the Kings' no minors), testing Lundqvist over and over again, even getting outshot 10-1 in the third.
Oh, and we won 4-2.
I don't like the phrase "the really good teams find a way to win." It's usually what the kinda good teams say when they get outplayed by a really good team but win anyway. The Rangers, for a chunk of last season, "found a way to win." We went up 3-1 over the Caps last spring by "finding a way to win" (his name was Henrik). Generally, if your team is "finding a way to win," it's on the brink of "losing a lot." That said, there are some pieces of good news that came out of us "finding a way to win" last night.
The obvious one is the one that comforted us through most of last season: Lundqvist remains elite, and as so many better-paid-than-I sportswriters have said, as long as he remains so, the Rangers will continue to be relevant. But there's more than that with this group. It's a lot easier to get outshot 10-1 in a period when your one shot is a lonely Marian Gaborik shot from the circle that finds its way to twine. And yeah, we took some bad penalties, but our PK unit was superb in killing 6 of 7. We just never got the momentum going.
This is kind of a weird, hard-to-substantiate claim, but it felt more like we just couldn't win the battles than that we weren't giving enough effort. Winning 3 games in 4 nights is hard work. And it's hard to complain about a team that has been playing like we've been playing. And it's not like we didn't win handily: we led for the entirety of these two "lazy" periods, and we led by two for over half of that, including the final 15:38 of the game. And had Gaborik not attempted an impossible pass through a defenseman to try to get Prospal the hat trick instead of just shooting at the open net himself, the game would have ended with a 3-goal cushion instead.
And, most importantly, no one is trying to pass along any illusions that this is how we want to win hockey games. Tortorella's reactions correctly diagnosed the game:
---------------
You find a way to win one of these games when you're not on, and we were not on. It wasn't laziness, it has nothing to do with that; we were just a step behind. We tried, but we couldn't win battles. We couldn't catch up to them. We looked like a tired hockey club. We were a step behind in every facet, but we still found a way to win. We can't get spoiled. It's not easy winning games. Good teams win games like this, and we did. So that's a good sign.
---------------
So, maybe I shouldn't be feeling so down on this win. As Michael Obernauer put it, "you won't find any argument from the Rangers that they were outworked and on their heels Wednesday night, easily the second-best team on the ice. But you also won't find any Rangers apologizing for taking the two points."
And you can't really argue with 28 goals for and 14 goals against to come up with 12 points in 7 games to start the season, can you?
Saturday night, we play the Leafs again. I'd like to repeat what we did to them Monday night. Oh, and Leafs fans and Islander fans: don't despair yet. You play each other November 23. That means one of you is bound to have a win in the books by Thanksgiving!
Oh, and we won 4-2.
I don't like the phrase "the really good teams find a way to win." It's usually what the kinda good teams say when they get outplayed by a really good team but win anyway. The Rangers, for a chunk of last season, "found a way to win." We went up 3-1 over the Caps last spring by "finding a way to win" (his name was Henrik). Generally, if your team is "finding a way to win," it's on the brink of "losing a lot." That said, there are some pieces of good news that came out of us "finding a way to win" last night.
The obvious one is the one that comforted us through most of last season: Lundqvist remains elite, and as so many better-paid-than-I sportswriters have said, as long as he remains so, the Rangers will continue to be relevant. But there's more than that with this group. It's a lot easier to get outshot 10-1 in a period when your one shot is a lonely Marian Gaborik shot from the circle that finds its way to twine. And yeah, we took some bad penalties, but our PK unit was superb in killing 6 of 7. We just never got the momentum going.
This is kind of a weird, hard-to-substantiate claim, but it felt more like we just couldn't win the battles than that we weren't giving enough effort. Winning 3 games in 4 nights is hard work. And it's hard to complain about a team that has been playing like we've been playing. And it's not like we didn't win handily: we led for the entirety of these two "lazy" periods, and we led by two for over half of that, including the final 15:38 of the game. And had Gaborik not attempted an impossible pass through a defenseman to try to get Prospal the hat trick instead of just shooting at the open net himself, the game would have ended with a 3-goal cushion instead.
And, most importantly, no one is trying to pass along any illusions that this is how we want to win hockey games. Tortorella's reactions correctly diagnosed the game:
---------------
You find a way to win one of these games when you're not on, and we were not on. It wasn't laziness, it has nothing to do with that; we were just a step behind. We tried, but we couldn't win battles. We couldn't catch up to them. We looked like a tired hockey club. We were a step behind in every facet, but we still found a way to win. We can't get spoiled. It's not easy winning games. Good teams win games like this, and we did. So that's a good sign.
---------------
So, maybe I shouldn't be feeling so down on this win. As Michael Obernauer put it, "you won't find any argument from the Rangers that they were outworked and on their heels Wednesday night, easily the second-best team on the ice. But you also won't find any Rangers apologizing for taking the two points."
And you can't really argue with 28 goals for and 14 goals against to come up with 12 points in 7 games to start the season, can you?
Saturday night, we play the Leafs again. I'd like to repeat what we did to them Monday night. Oh, and Leafs fans and Islander fans: don't despair yet. You play each other November 23. That means one of you is bound to have a win in the books by Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Brashear out for the night
Brashear is out for the night with old age, what the Rangers are calling "soreness" and nothing more. Voros will take his place on the 4th line tonight against the Kings.
More specifically speaking
I'm separating this portion of the post out so you don't think I talk too much. I want to talk about some personnel here.
No need to talk about our first class goaltending (did I mention it was our backup who picked up that first shutout of the season on Sunday?), starting at the top of the lineup and moving down...
Dubinsky is starting to figure out his job as the center between Gaborik and Prospal: keep Gaborik and Prospal happy. Gaborik continues to be impressive, with 5 goals and 4 assists so far this season, and what has really gotten me is how he comes out of nowhere. All of a sudden, he's shooting the puck, and you're not sure how he found such good ice position. Prospal, meanwhile, is very obviously finding a way to skate with the puck past 2 defenders, by being strong with it. Dubinsky's job, then, is to get other people out of the way, and to keep the puck for long stretches, until he can get it to one of them. And he has been, admirably. Dubi's been significantly stronger on the puck and more physical this season, and he's starting to develop a real chemistry with his two scoring wingers. You know, like a first line should.
Speaking of centers figuring out what their jobs are, Chris Drury has had probably his best stretch as a Ranger. With the pressure off, he's back to being an incredibly valuable penalty killer and a presence in front of the net. Callahan... was probably a little more shaken up by that collision in practice last week than he let on. After his heroics against the Caps, while he's still been putting his body in the right place, he's looked a little weak with his stick and on the puck these last two games. I expect this will get sorted out. Higgins, on Drury's other side, has continued to play great hockey. He's frustrated he hasn't scored yet (a feeling that was probably compounded by his being the only forward not named Brashear or Boyle that didn't nab at least a point Monday night), but I'm not too worried - I really like the things he's been doing with the puck, and the scoring will come - as long as in the meanwhile it's coming from everyone else.
Anisimov is starting to develop, and while I'm not exactly buying his jersey yet, I'm excited about where he might be 6 months or 2 years from now. I'm still a little confused about what's happening wing-wise on his and the fourth lines. For two consecutive games, Torts has put Kotalik down on the fourth line, opting for Avery and Lisin surrounding Anisimov. Not sure what he's seeing in Lisin (who has admittedly been playing decent hockey) that I'm not, but I can't imagine how it justifies placing him above Ales Kotalik, who has already shown some flashes of brilliance. Meanwhile, if the idea is to put some scoring on the fourth line (which Kotalik, who is part of Torts's 5-forward power play unit, would certainly bring), shouldn't Voros be out there instead of Brashear? Anyway, I'm very happy with Boyle, and Brashear finally won a fight the other day.
Hey, remember that time Wade Redden wasn't atrocious? Yeah, he's actually been pretty solid. Rozsival, after his benching, has improved back to regular-grade awful, but Redden is starting to play like a guy I might actually want on my team. It's weird. I keep cheering for him and then looking back on myself going "wait, huh?" The dude is +4 with 3 points so far. I hope this keeps up.
On our other defensemen, the story is obvious. Staal is great, Girardi is becoming better every game, and our kids (cause Staal and Girardi aren't "our kids") are young and talented and need to learn to play more solidly, which they will. For now, they're picking up the job pretty quickly.
I'm not unhappy!
Also, don't be fooled: NHL.com is wrong about the standings. We're not first in the league. We're tied with the Pens in points, in the same number of games, but they beat us head-to-head, so NHL.com should be listing them ahead of us. No idea why they're not.
No need to talk about our first class goaltending (did I mention it was our backup who picked up that first shutout of the season on Sunday?), starting at the top of the lineup and moving down...
Dubinsky is starting to figure out his job as the center between Gaborik and Prospal: keep Gaborik and Prospal happy. Gaborik continues to be impressive, with 5 goals and 4 assists so far this season, and what has really gotten me is how he comes out of nowhere. All of a sudden, he's shooting the puck, and you're not sure how he found such good ice position. Prospal, meanwhile, is very obviously finding a way to skate with the puck past 2 defenders, by being strong with it. Dubinsky's job, then, is to get other people out of the way, and to keep the puck for long stretches, until he can get it to one of them. And he has been, admirably. Dubi's been significantly stronger on the puck and more physical this season, and he's starting to develop a real chemistry with his two scoring wingers. You know, like a first line should.
Speaking of centers figuring out what their jobs are, Chris Drury has had probably his best stretch as a Ranger. With the pressure off, he's back to being an incredibly valuable penalty killer and a presence in front of the net. Callahan... was probably a little more shaken up by that collision in practice last week than he let on. After his heroics against the Caps, while he's still been putting his body in the right place, he's looked a little weak with his stick and on the puck these last two games. I expect this will get sorted out. Higgins, on Drury's other side, has continued to play great hockey. He's frustrated he hasn't scored yet (a feeling that was probably compounded by his being the only forward not named Brashear or Boyle that didn't nab at least a point Monday night), but I'm not too worried - I really like the things he's been doing with the puck, and the scoring will come - as long as in the meanwhile it's coming from everyone else.
Anisimov is starting to develop, and while I'm not exactly buying his jersey yet, I'm excited about where he might be 6 months or 2 years from now. I'm still a little confused about what's happening wing-wise on his and the fourth lines. For two consecutive games, Torts has put Kotalik down on the fourth line, opting for Avery and Lisin surrounding Anisimov. Not sure what he's seeing in Lisin (who has admittedly been playing decent hockey) that I'm not, but I can't imagine how it justifies placing him above Ales Kotalik, who has already shown some flashes of brilliance. Meanwhile, if the idea is to put some scoring on the fourth line (which Kotalik, who is part of Torts's 5-forward power play unit, would certainly bring), shouldn't Voros be out there instead of Brashear? Anyway, I'm very happy with Boyle, and Brashear finally won a fight the other day.
Hey, remember that time Wade Redden wasn't atrocious? Yeah, he's actually been pretty solid. Rozsival, after his benching, has improved back to regular-grade awful, but Redden is starting to play like a guy I might actually want on my team. It's weird. I keep cheering for him and then looking back on myself going "wait, huh?" The dude is +4 with 3 points so far. I hope this keeps up.
On our other defensemen, the story is obvious. Staal is great, Girardi is becoming better every game, and our kids (cause Staal and Girardi aren't "our kids") are young and talented and need to learn to play more solidly, which they will. For now, they're picking up the job pretty quickly.
I'm not unhappy!
Also, don't be fooled: NHL.com is wrong about the standings. We're not first in the league. We're tied with the Pens in points, in the same number of games, but they beat us head-to-head, so NHL.com should be listing them ahead of us. No idea why they're not.
Two great games, post two days late
Okay, over Sunday and Monday, we won two back-to-back games by an aggregate 10-2. Can we talk about this? The two games represented two different kinds of games we expect the Rangers to lose, and yet we won both decisively. That is awesome.
Sunday night, we ground out a hard effort, outplaying the Ducks pretty consistently for 42:14 (outshooting them 11-1 in the first and 24-12 through two) before ever scoring a goal. This is exactly the kind of game where a Ranger fan gets nervous: we keep outplaying them for most of the game, and then they get a lucky bounce, score first, and win 1-0. We've seen this movie before.
Only this is John Tortorella's team now, and that means this is a team that keeps fighting hard and forcing chances, even if they've already been doing so for two fruitless periods. And so Alex Kotalik, not some lucky Duck (ha!), broke the scoreless tie on the power play. And we kept pressing, and we kept playing hard, and then with 5:38 to go, it became 2-0 Blueshirts, Anisimov's first (and Avery's first point), also on the power play. Again, we didn't back down, we kept the game in their end, and Girardi hit the empty net to finish it out. A thing of beauty.
Monday night, we played different kind of game we used to like to lose. After scoring on the PP 2:34 into the game and dominating the Leafs through the first period (outshooting them 15-8) and giving up a late goal to make it 2-1 at the first intermission, we bounced back to regain the 2-goal lead just 26 seconds into the period, then fell asleep. After the previous night's 3-0 victory, and up 3-1 over a winless team in this one, we seemed to consider this a game in hand. All of a sudden we were spending long stretches of time in our zone, laying down to let Lundqvist bail us out. Had he not, it would have gotten much closer much sooner, but as it was, Toronto finally came within one with 2:49 left in the period. And honestly, they could easily have been leading by then.
But between periods, it seems, Torts sent out a reminder that this is, as mentioned, his team. Yes, we played a great 60-minute effort just the previous night, and yes, we were still up in this one, but it was our game to lose. Had we played the third like we had since we scored goal number three, we would have lost it. Instead, we listened, and who better to kick things off than Sean Avery, with his first goal of the season? From there, the flood gates opened. We took the game to the Leafs despite our comfortable lead, and we scored goals until there was only 1:57 left on the clock, when Avery tallied again to make it 7-2.
In the past, you may recall relying on one or two "key players" to provide the offense for the team. When it was Jagr, it worked, because he was Jaromir Jagr. Otherwise, it largely hasn't. These days, are we spreading the offense around better? Well, in routing the leafs, 11 different Rangers (nine forwards and two defensemen) picked up points. Our 7 goals came from 5 different people. Eight Rangers (Dubinsky, Prospal, Drury, Avery, Anisimov, Gaborik, Redden, Girardi) had multi-point nights. Yeah, times are good.
Look, I know it's a young team, and I know things aren't gonna stay this good. They can't possibly. We haven't lost since opening night, when we lost to the defending Stanley Cup Champions, in their building (which we can't win in anyway), for their banner-raising, by one goal. Since then, we're 5-0, outscoring our opponents 22-9, including 18-5 in the final two periods. In fact, other than the Caps scoring one in the first period of our 4-3 triumph in DC, we haven't been outscored in any period in that stretch. So, yeah, I know there's gonna be a fall off. But let's do this for as long as we can first. This is fun. Let's show the Kings how much fun we have, tonight at 7.
Sunday night, we ground out a hard effort, outplaying the Ducks pretty consistently for 42:14 (outshooting them 11-1 in the first and 24-12 through two) before ever scoring a goal. This is exactly the kind of game where a Ranger fan gets nervous: we keep outplaying them for most of the game, and then they get a lucky bounce, score first, and win 1-0. We've seen this movie before.
Only this is John Tortorella's team now, and that means this is a team that keeps fighting hard and forcing chances, even if they've already been doing so for two fruitless periods. And so Alex Kotalik, not some lucky Duck (ha!), broke the scoreless tie on the power play. And we kept pressing, and we kept playing hard, and then with 5:38 to go, it became 2-0 Blueshirts, Anisimov's first (and Avery's first point), also on the power play. Again, we didn't back down, we kept the game in their end, and Girardi hit the empty net to finish it out. A thing of beauty.
Monday night, we played different kind of game we used to like to lose. After scoring on the PP 2:34 into the game and dominating the Leafs through the first period (outshooting them 15-8) and giving up a late goal to make it 2-1 at the first intermission, we bounced back to regain the 2-goal lead just 26 seconds into the period, then fell asleep. After the previous night's 3-0 victory, and up 3-1 over a winless team in this one, we seemed to consider this a game in hand. All of a sudden we were spending long stretches of time in our zone, laying down to let Lundqvist bail us out. Had he not, it would have gotten much closer much sooner, but as it was, Toronto finally came within one with 2:49 left in the period. And honestly, they could easily have been leading by then.
But between periods, it seems, Torts sent out a reminder that this is, as mentioned, his team. Yes, we played a great 60-minute effort just the previous night, and yes, we were still up in this one, but it was our game to lose. Had we played the third like we had since we scored goal number three, we would have lost it. Instead, we listened, and who better to kick things off than Sean Avery, with his first goal of the season? From there, the flood gates opened. We took the game to the Leafs despite our comfortable lead, and we scored goals until there was only 1:57 left on the clock, when Avery tallied again to make it 7-2.
In the past, you may recall relying on one or two "key players" to provide the offense for the team. When it was Jagr, it worked, because he was Jaromir Jagr. Otherwise, it largely hasn't. These days, are we spreading the offense around better? Well, in routing the leafs, 11 different Rangers (nine forwards and two defensemen) picked up points. Our 7 goals came from 5 different people. Eight Rangers (Dubinsky, Prospal, Drury, Avery, Anisimov, Gaborik, Redden, Girardi) had multi-point nights. Yeah, times are good.
Look, I know it's a young team, and I know things aren't gonna stay this good. They can't possibly. We haven't lost since opening night, when we lost to the defending Stanley Cup Champions, in their building (which we can't win in anyway), for their banner-raising, by one goal. Since then, we're 5-0, outscoring our opponents 22-9, including 18-5 in the final two periods. In fact, other than the Caps scoring one in the first period of our 4-3 triumph in DC, we haven't been outscored in any period in that stretch. So, yeah, I know there's gonna be a fall off. But let's do this for as long as we can first. This is fun. Let's show the Kings how much fun we have, tonight at 7.
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