Rangers 4, Flyers 1

Sunday was better. Sunday, mostly the same Rangers showed up. Mostly the same Rangers led the way. And we got a lot more power play opportunities. Avery did what he does, but better. And we scored 3 PP goals. Honestly, aside from slightly different officiating, and a little more luck, there was only one Ranger who played radically different in the 4-1 victory than he did in the 4-2 loss: Wade Redden. He played a solid game of defense in this game. And we won 4-1.

I'm not saying the first game was Redden's fault, and I'm CERTAINLY not saying the second game was. But, if you compare game to game, against the same team, most Rangers played about equivalently. Zherdev did some pretty things but made some mistakes. Antropov was big (and therefore effective). Naslund didn't seem to matter. Gomez and Drury remembered to do their jobs. Staal was the best player on the team not named Henrik. Avery annoyed the piss out of everyone and then turned around and scored goals while they were whining in the penalty box about how unfair it was that a big meaniehead was allowed to play with them. Rozsival was unacceptable. Lundqvist was fantastic. Et cetera, et cetera, for both games.

Except Redden, who was awful Saturday and solid Sunday. Now, again, I don't wanna put our entire season on one dude. But I said to my girlfriend just before we opened the season, "I don't wanna oversimplify, but basically if Redden is amazing, our season will be amazing. If he's average, it will be average. If he's terrible, so will we be. He was brought on to be the defensive difference-maker, but we are paying so much for him that if he is another hole, we will be bad." Now, I'm not saying I'm always right. But I'm always right. The team is coming together, slowly, but it needs to keep coming together, and I can't help but feeling like everyone else's role is pretty much set in that. Avery will be leading the charge, Rozsival will be taking away from it, and Lundqvist will be a shining star. And I feel like Redden is enough to tip the scales in either direction.

Who knows? It's a weird thing to come out of this weekend writing primarily about Wade Redden. But all the "real" sportswriters keep talking about Sean Avery, so I guess I'm allowed to talk about someone else.