After the glow

Tonight is going to be HELL of hard. Upon reflection, while I'll grant that we played hard, we also got some gifts from a generous Manny Fernandez. I'm not saying we didn't deserve the win. We absolutely earned that win. But I am saying that despite the Bruins being in 1st and the 'Canes being in 9th, playing as well as we did yesterday will not necessarily give us a win tonight. Especially given that it's 2 games in 2 days, for a team whose coach a week ago referred to them as easily tired. Gomez seemed refreshingly aware: "It's not like we're sitting pretty in the standings...Let's not get carried away - it's just some wins. We'll enjoy it for a little bit, but we have a huge game and that's our focus now."

Speaking of Gomez, if the rest of the team slowed down to his speed against the Isles last week, he quickened up to theirs yesterday. The Muffin Man as well as Drury Lane (eat your heart out, Stan Fischler!) were both where they needed to be most of the game. Note that I'm not saying they didn't make mistakes. I'm saying that they didn't use their mistakes as an excuse to give up on the world, start listening to My Chemical Romance, and declare "well, there goes another one." They stood up and kept the fight, and that was almost more inspiring than a rout would have been (although I'd love to see more routs in our future).

In the last week or two, we've seen a complete team overhaul. We've started using our offensive strength to be - well - offensively strong. We've won consistently, we've recovered from mistakes, we've beaten the bad teams by a lot and the good teams by a little. This is all true. But it's not the point. The point is that we still need to be better. A lot better, possibly as soon as tonight. If yesterday's picture of the standings wasn't clear enough, let me give you the short version:

Our game tonight is the only one that could possibly change our picture of the standings tonight. If we win, we're in 5th. If we lose (in regulation), we're in 9th. Either way, there are 15 games left in the regular season after this one. Carolina has been playing well, is also on a 3-game winning streak, and has as much to lose or gain with these 2 points. This is going to be harder than the Bruins game. I need to see fewer mistakes from our leaders (Dubi, Drury, Redden, Rosie). I need to see more speed from Antropov and more...what the French call "I don't know what"...from Morris (like, enough to make me remember his name without thinking for a few seconds). I'm cautiously optimistic. That's what it means to be a Ranger fan. Let's Go Rangers!