"It's fine if you get beat. It's fine if you compete and get beat, but to play this way? That's not what it's like to be a Ranger."
That was Sean Avery's take on yet another embarrassing, lifeless, effortless shutout loss, Saturday night's to the Canadiens we had so taken to task only 6 days prior. And as Larry Brooks accurately responds to close his column yesterday, "Oh, yes it is."
I won't spend time here in this blog talking about the specific ways in which we are a worthless squad. You can find plenty of that here and here and here and here. If you're looking for a list, Larry Brooks provides: "Rangers were beaten back on potential icing calls. Rangers were caught on odd-man rushes. Rangers covered nobody in front. Maybe that's what's meant by a team effort." But I don't have to convince you that we're a shitty hockey team. In two consecutive games earlier this week, we outscored our opponents 14-4, and in the 5 games surrounding those two, we were outscored 14-1. We went through literally zero personnel changes in that time, save for a backup goalie shift.
So yes, the Rangers are an uninspired squad. The questions are: "Why?" and subsequently "What now?" The why is a big mystery. And not just to us. To the coaching staff (Tortorella simply was "not going to dissect it" for the media, other than to say "At times it was decent, at other times it wasn't there"), to the captain ("It just seems to compound itself"), and to individual players (Girardi's best answer was "I know you're sick of hearing this, but it's really hard to put your finger on it").
You'll forgive me if I wasn't impressed when the HNIC broadcaster Saturday night praised Benoit Pouliot's ability to "confuse the Rangers' defense."
Okay, fine. I have some theories. Mostly they involve the questionable nature of forming a team concept within a squad of journeymen. Larry Brooks gives the fair summary: "There's a correlation, you know, between not protecting your goaltender when he's run, not avenging your captain when he's concussed, not protecting your all-world scorer when he fights with an opposition enforcer, and lame white flag performances like this that occur regularly." The correlation, obviously, is the lack of a team character. Brooksie, of course, goes on to blame Tortorella's lack of vision, and while the coach certainly has his faults, I'm not quite ready to drink that Kool-Aid. The simpler explanation is: we have less of a team character than anyone else in the league because we were formed as less of a team than anyone else in the league.
Every off-season, we make a gigantic shift in personnel. This season is the first time in a long time we've even tried to build a team with kids from Hartford, and they're being brought up into a culture whose example-setting veterans are Chris Drury, Wade Redden, Michal Rozsival, Donald Brashear, and Ales Kotalik. We're bringing them up into this same bizarre losing journeyman culture. No one is being taught, on the ice, to stick up for your teammates. No one is being taught that character. So of course it's lacking. Is the coach partly to blame? Of course. But so are the on-ice "leaders." Right now, that outspoken leadership is pretty much just coming from the goalie and the ex-con.
But let's blow right past the "why," since all the professionals seem astoundingly unable (unwilling?) to so much as hazard a guess, and talk about the "what now." The most tragic part of all this is that we're tied in points for 6th in the conference. One of the often overlooked negative outcomes of the new rules designed to make the game "more exciting," the shootouts and three-point games, the increasing randomness of calls by clueless officials, the tendency of officials to push games towards ties because they think close games are high-selling games, and so on, is the macro effect on the season. People are quick to complain about all of these things affecting an individual game, but they also have a regression effect on the league. "The New NHL" pushes everyone toward the middle. Anyway, sorry about that Special Rant. The point is: while we're tied in points for sixth, we're only three points ahead of 13th. Tied for 6th, 3 points ahead of 13th.
Why is that tragic? Because this new homogenized conference makes us look better than we are. Under no circumstances can we realistically make a reasonable playoff run, and yet we've been sitting in a playoff spot for a long time. Understand: I'm not one of those draft pick optimizing fuckers; I believe a team should absolutely win every game it can, and I would never rather come in 15th than 14th just to get the earlier pick. But I fear my management. You see, the trade deadline looms. I mean, it's March 3 at 3:00 PM. (Hey, I guess that makes it the anniversary of this blog!) But because there are only 2 days between the 14-day Olympic break, from February 15-28, and that deadline, and no trades may be conducted during the break (not to mention scouting), we're coming up on decision time sooner than you think.
The problem with winning a couple of big games like we did last week, and keeping ourselves in what looks like playoff contention, is that management gets the idea that we actually are contenders. You see, if we can make a playoff run (get in, push the round to a third home game, maybe even push a second round), that means major revenue for the guys selling tickets. They want that revenue, because it is money. Also, they've proven themselves to not necessarily understand what's good for the future of the organization. My fear is that Glen Sather and crew will think that, come March, the Rangers are buyers.
In case anyone's unclear, we refer to a trade deadline buyer as a team that is looking to make an honest run at a championship. These teams will tend to be looking to "buy" (or "rent") a very talented, possibly expensive player or two that will complete the squad in the short term. They will be willing to give up young, underdeveloped talent and draft picks for the acquisition, because they think it will be worth it to make the run for the Cup this year. Conversely, a seller is the team that is likely to agree to such a deal from a buyer. Their expensive veterans aren't doing them any good right now, they're not fooling anyone into thinking they're contending for a Cup, and they're looking for more of a foundation to build on, so that future seasons will be better.
My problem is that we can't even lose right. I'm not talking about tanking very much more than we already are: we're a shit team right now. But if we could at least have lost just two more games than we had -- if just a couple of our seven 1-goal regulation time wins had gone the other way -- we'd be comfortably in 13th place. Unquestionably the bottom of the conference. Widely accepted as jokers who need to make a huge change. Doubtless trade deadline sellers. But things being as they are, this same bad hockey team finds itself in a position to hoodwink itself into doing something really stupid.
So don't get me wrong: tonight, when the Penguins come to New York, and when congruously a flock of Pens fans comes to my apartment, I'll be rooting for the Rangers. I'll be rooting for us to win 32-0 and for Sidney Crosby to break his everything bone. I'm wearing my Lundqvist jersey around Pittsburgh all day. But if the Canadiens, Flyers, Bruins, Islanders, Panthers, Thrashers, and Lightning all win a lot of games over the next three weeks, I probably won't be losing too much sleep over it. 'Cause really, who do we think we're kidding?
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