What a neat score that is, winning a game by scoring goals. When it was 2-2, I thought to myself (and said to no one), "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could win this game by a real score, solidly, like 5-2, like the Pens did to the Thrashers last night after being tied 2-2?" And then lookie! 5-2!
Okay, so it's hard to write about this game without writing about Sean Avery. I didn't want this to be a Sean Avery vs. his former team storyline. I really didn't. But what can you do? Dude played easily his best game since game 7 of the Caps series last Spring, and possibly since before then. He was remarkable. He was pissed off from top to bottom, he got in everyone's face, and it's undeniable that his attitude led directly to his 4 points (a goal and 3 assists, helping on every Rangers tally but Callahan's unassisted* empty-netter). The most promising thing about it, though, was Avery's subdued post-game comment:
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I can take a lot of good things out of tonight, but it doesn't really mean anything unless I come back and play that way again tomorrow... What I've got to do to help this team is be consistent and play like that every night.
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Yes. Avery is an unbelievably effective player when he feels comfortable enough to play his game. He needs to play, as they say, "on the edge." This is going to mean taking the occasional penalty, as he did last night. But he needs to have his team's support in doing that. We have an exceptional PK, let's use it.
Last night, I think, was a good example. Avery was awarded a classic call-by-number when he was given a 10-minute misconduct for bumping a guy after the play was over (I spent the rest of the game, after each play was over, pointing out a Star who bumped a Ranger and wondering where the 10-minute misconduct was). Yet, when he returned, Torts was smart enough to continue rewarding him with ice time. It continued working. Avery was given more ice time in the third period than he was in the first (his misconduct took him out of half of the second), and he continued to be effective (as established, no goals were scored through the duration of the misconduct).
Ice time was better overall, actually. Not yet quite good enough, but far more balanced than it's been. Seems like between Christensen and Avery, some of our forwards might be starting to convince Tortorella to balance his sheet a bit. With the exception of Donald "What's my job, again?" Brashear and Enver "Nope!" Lisin, who combined for the least ice time, with 9:17, things were not entirely terrible. Dubinsky, Gaborik, Higgins, Callahan, and Drury each logged between 18:22 and 21:49 of ice time, and Christensen, Kotalik, Avery (who was ineligible for 12:00), and Anisimov each got between 13:17 and 15:57 (Boyle clocked in at 10:25). All things considered, that's pretty good. If we assume Avery's 13:20 would have been up at more like 16 minutes if he hadn't been briefly and weirdly ejected, I don't hate this idea. Your best players should get more ice time than your third-line agitators, as long as the latter gets a reasonable amount, which they did.
The only problem is that we don't have a fourth line. At all. It's not a good strategy, being an NHL team with no fourth line. And hell, even if it is, it's just not worth the salary at this point. If we are only going to skate 3 lines, we should fire Brashear, Lisin, Boyle, and Voros. Their unused combined $3.715 million dollars could be used to upgrade Christopher Higgins into Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis, or Marian Hossa. Or, to upgrade Ales Kotalik into Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Patrick Marleau, a Sedin twin, or Ilya Kovalchuk.
That's without moving either of our albatross contracts, kids. That's just getting rid of the fourth-liners that don't play (by the way, Boyle, who gets far and away the most useful minutes of the group, is only $525,000 of that, $25,000 over the minimum NHL salary), and using one forward's salary to contribute to that of his replacement. Never-played-fourth-liners plus Ales Kotalik equals Ilya Kovalchuk, salary-wise. Kinda makes you wonder why we bothered with these contracts, huh?
Finally, there's an important lesson to be learned from Avery's performance last night. Playing with an edge, with fierceness, and with pride is not only acceptable; it's vital to winning hockey games. John Tortorella came to New York a few months ago with the mantra "safe is death." For whatever reason, that's been hard to see in his New York Rangers. We have a team that should be able to score but isn't, and I think last night was a good object lesson in why. It was the speed and the hitting and the getting-in-people's-faces that opened up all those chances.
The moment that bothered me most about last night was early on, when some Shark crosschecked Lundqvist to the ice, and Girardi skated right up behind him and stood there with his hands on his back for a second, then skated away. I know we've been defending ourselves more lately, but it is scary that that the team has a mentality that allows that to ever happen. For your leading (at least ice time-wise) defenseman to see someone take your goalie down and not flatten him is scary.
Yes, I know. "You don't want to risk the penalty." "We've got a game to win." And I know it's weird for me to call this out after winning 5-2 like that. But "we've got a game to win" is "safe." Teams should not feel like they can do that to us: the short-term gain of not taking the two-minute penalty is overshadowed by the long-term loss of teams walking all over us. That mentality does not lead to wins, in the end.
Last night, Avery did not play it safe. He played right on the edge. He played like he gave a shit. He was put in the box for 12:00 for it.
And he won us the hockey game, 5-2.
So, yes, Sean, you absolutely do need to play like that consistently to help the team, as you say. But it wouldn't hurt if some other Rangers maybe took the hint, too.
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