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.
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