The jury's still out, but last night's results are in. I'll get to the "sigh of relief" standings picture later, first, we need to talk about *us*. We came out hard, scored early, then fell a little back, gave up two on a bad penalty and a bad turnover from two top forwards, and went back to the locker room down 2-1, feeling like the game was already over.
Sound familiar?
Ah, but there's a new Sheriff in town. And he doesn't put up with that kind of self-pity. We don't know what he said to them in that locker room between periods, but we know that when they came back out, Zherdev (responsible for the aforementioned bad turnover) did not touch ice again, and the Rangers went back to dominating. We scored 2 more that period and a capper in the third to bring home another well-earned, much-needed 2 points. All we know is what Gomez said: "Torts let us know that it's unacceptable...It has been a while since I've heard a speech like that. We were playing too timid. Nashville had the 2-1 lead and we thought it was over. He let us know what it is going to be like from now on. He lit into all of us. We were feeling sorry for ourselves and he spotted that right away. He called us out. I thought we responded well."
Again, the game was a showcase of Old Rangers and New Rangers. This time, New Rangers were around for around 45 of the 60 minutes, and won out. Let's hope this is a trend in that direction. Let's hope that every game, we go a little farther in that direction. Last week, we were good enough to beat the Islanders and the Avs, good enough to take advantage of a shitty backup goalie. Earlier, we weren't good enough to beat the surging 'Canes, but last night, we were good enough to beat the Predators, although we probably weren't quite good enough to beat the Flyers. This weekend, we'll have to be. I think we can be. It will be a pretty big litmus test.
But today, we can take a deep breath and celebrate. Last night was an excellent night for hockey.
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