Meet the New Rangers

Same as the old Rangers? Maybe. First, the statistics. Since beating Boston 3-1 on January 9 (yes, January 9), if you discount the two home games in a row that we won by an aggregate 14-4, non-Gaborik Rangers have scored a total of 5 goals. Total. At all. Overall on the season (including those games we somehow won), we're looking at 2.49 goals per game (28th in the league), for a total point differential of -12. On the power play, meanwhile (you should sit down for this), we're 7 for 82 (8.5%) over our last 23 games, 3 for 48 (6.3%) in our last 14, and 0 for 25 (0%) in our last 7.

As Andrew Gross put it, "I'm not missing anything here, am I? That's Caddyshack II bad."

And, yeah, two nights ago in LA, things weren't terribly different. But before you get all "blah blah blargh bleh same old Ranger crap bluuuuu blah bleh" on me (I know what you're like), hang on: did you really expect things to be? We got rid of one guy with 6 goals and 8 assists in 56 games and one regular resident of the scratch club, and we brought in one past-his-best-years veteran and the guy with the second most fights in the league this season, for basically the same money. Did anyone think Olli Jokinen was supposed to suddenly, after playing for the Flames literally the night before, come score 4 goals?

OK, if you thought that, what the hell is wrong with you? We moved some bad personnel around to give some other people a shot, and in the process, we saved ourselves 2 more years of Kotalik's $3 million contract. That's all. So, yeah, the new Rangers pretty much are the old Rangers. What did you people expect?

So, let's keep regarding this as a rebuilding year and hoping our management is doing the same. With that in mind, Torts put together (and sometimes even used) the following lines for the new guys' debut:
Prospal - Jokinen - Gaborik
Avery - Dubinksy - Callahan
Prust - Anisimov - Christensen
Boyle - Drury - Voros

That's...wow. That's exactly what I'd like him to do. He then proceeded to actually play all four lines. Which is also exactly what I'd like him to do.

Wow. So, I guess, if we're honestly going to accept that this is not a winning season (duh), then all we have to hope for is that we stay consistent with these lines. Let the young guys play together, let the top line try to score, and let these lines gel some. After tonight (when we play the 11-0-in-their-last-11 Capitals), we have 4 games left before the Olympic break (I am miraculously going to two of them). This sounds like the perfect opportunity to leave the lines exactly the same for the next 5 games and see if they can start to gel.

Who knows, maybe by next season, we'll start to recognize some faces?