So the rapidly-plummeting Rangers beat the stagnantly-shitty Islanders 5-2 last night. And it was exciting, because we scored goals, and we got to cheer for those goals, and we won a game, and now there are a full four teams in the NHL with fewer points than we have.
And honestly, the game did have a different feel to it. Sure, they outshot us every period, including 14-4 in the first, but we came out of it up 2-0 regardless, and ultimately put our greasy rivals away. Small hoorays. It's a start.
We all know the important question is "Where do we go from here?" As Lundqvist put it, "It's hard to be satisfied" after this win. We know it's only one victory over a team as scrubby as ourselves, on the tail of a series of terrible games. What we need to talk about, well before we talk about turning anything around, is how to sustain and increase this kind of performance.
So, going into last night, Torts scratched Kotalik and Redden. This was absolutely a step in the right direction. The official lines he sent out were also interesting, bringing Christensen up onto the second line and shifting Drury down to the fourth (Lisin got the promotion up to Kotalik's spot, and Boyle was pushed out to wing on the fourth line). Meanwhile, Staal/Rozsival and Del Zotto/Girardi stayed together, leaving Heikkinen/Sanguinetti as the third pair.
Largely, that lineup is full of good signs. It means Torts doesn't fall victim to the Renneyitis of "if I'm gonna change the lineup at all, I might as well change all the lines!" It also means that scratching Redden wasn't a way to say "I only trust four defensemen." And the ice time kinda supported that: Sanguinetti, in his first game, only skated 8:46, but Heikkinen, who put in a much stronger effort, saw the ice for 12:35, still 10 minutes less than the other D-men, but a marked improvement, especially considering that it included 1:43 of shorthanded time.
Forward time was also more balanced (though not quite as balanced as it has to be). Donald "Haha suckers you're still paying me $1.4 million dollars! That's $7,527 a day!!" Brashear only got 4:36, but that's fine, because he is completely useless. That said, the theoretical move of Drury down to the 4th line balanced ice time out a bit, so he got about 15 minutes, Christensen got about 10, and Avery, Gaborik, Dubi, Prospal, Higgins, Drury, and Callahan each ranged between 12 and 22 minutes. I'd like to see more of that go to Avery (12:18), and I'd like to see Anisimov out there some more (did you see what he did for our fifth goal?), but it's a start.
And that's the theme, isn't it? "It's a start." The comforting things, once again, are the things coming out of the coach's mouth. Redden passed of his benching as "making an example" of him, which is insane. Torts responded with no illusions:
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This isn't to make an example out of Wade Redden, Wade Redden hasn't played well enough to be in the lineup. I'm not interested in making examples out of people. A coach's responsibility is to put the best lineup on the ice. I felt I did that last night. It will be the same lineup going into Philly. For 25 to 30 games, we tried to stay with him, we tried to bring confidence in with him and go about it that way, and it hasn't worked. It's still trying to gain confidence, but there's going to be no entitlement around here. I think it kind of stinks of that around here. We've got kids, and this coaching staff and manager want to infuse some kids into our lineup because we feel that's going to be the best way to build it. We'll go through some bumps in the road with kids, but not with underachieving veterans. I just don't buy it and it's not going to work that way.
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Preach it, John. The question that remains is how far we'll go with that. Sounds like we'll be keeping last night's lineup for tomorrow, which is a start. But we need more. Will Michal Rozsival, clearly kept around for his offensive mediocrity and not his defensive liability, keep seeing PP time but a decreased responsibility on ice? Will Girardi, who has absolutely been our best defenseman through this stretch, and who put on another fantastic show last night, see a corresponding increase? Will Anisimov and the like keep getting the chance to do what he did last night? When Redden gets his chance to come back, who sits, and for how long?
These are the questions that tomorrow afternoon's game in Philly will begin to answer. But hey - it's a start.
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