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.
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