Today's post title is the entire body of an e-mail to me from my father this morning. That pretty much sums up the situation. But there's no point talking about that again, is there? Beaten to pucks and on all the little battles, flat and lifeless except for Callahan and Avery, making terrible puck decisions, can't score if you're not Gaborik, etc. The story's becoming tired. So what I want to talk about today is: maybe it is partly Coach Tortorella's fault.
Fans of Play Petr Prucha (all both of you) will know I'm generally pretty positive on Torts. And it's easy to be: the man is full of fire and preaches energy, accountability, and team unity to a team whose biggest problem is its lifelessness and lack of all those things. It's hard to blame him for the results, handed a squad full of such under-achievers and so little cap room to work with. It's a financial problem for him to send a guy like Redden to the minors, so he's doing the best he can with the hand he was dealt, etc.
But last night got me thinking. Surely you remember when, halfway through the second period, Del Zotto got an extra 2 minutes for yelling at an official after a call. With like 30 seconds left on the PK, Rozsival had all the opportunity to clear the puck, and instead fired it directly into Ryan Callahan, who was 10 feet away. It bounced off Cally and right out to a Predator, who was able to take Lundqvist by surprise and score what would end up being the last goal of the game.
Of course, none of this was what "got me thinking." This was all, so far, par for the course. But when the Rangers returned to the bench, Tortorella had one of his patented angry-times, at DZ. He screamed at the kid, sat him down at the end of the bench, and didn't play him for the rest of the period. Rozsival was back out a shift later, and led Ranger defensemen in ice time both through the second and for the whole game. Our beloved broadcast team, who admittedly should have conditioned me not to listen to a word they say by now, couldn't stop talking about how the one thing that really gets Torts mad is when you mouth off at the officials.
Hang on. This is the one thing that really gets Torts mad? Look, I understand that DZ made a mistake he probably shouldn't have made. And I understand that, technically, that mistake led to the extra two minutes, during which that goal was scored. But even if you make the argument that he was directly responsible for the goal, was he more responsible than the guy who couldn't get the puck anywhere past his own teammate from 10 feet away? The clear should have been a gimme, so much so that Lundqvist, whose only crime last night was trusting his team's "top" defenseman, relaxed enough to get caught.
This reveals a mentality that frightens me. We're going to teach the 19-year-old "wunderkind" (from the Yiddish for wonderous kindling) that arguing with a ref is an unforgivably benchable offense, but playing flaccid, shitty defense is a great way to earn a huge contract and top ice time every game. And yes, I know that DZ had his ice time made up to him, so he ended up skating almost as much as Rozsival by the end of the game. But Michal didn't get yelled at in front of his entire team in the middle of the game, and Del Zotto did. That's bad conditioning.
When asked in the past why, given our defense's propensity to be shitty, he hasn't brought up more youngsters to give them a chance, Torts has given the questionable excuse of not wanting to "stunt their growth." It's interesting that he doesn't wanna ruin Bobby Sanguinetti by exposing him to this squad, but he's willing to embarrass Michael Del Zotto for showing a little too much excitement on the ice.
Understand: I don't necessarily disagree with Torts's ice time decision, giving Rozsival more because he's basically got no one else, rotating lots of different young people in now and again, but mostly letting them keep developing in Hartford, etc. As we know, he's stuck with a shitty hand. And I don't want this post to be yet another indictment of our shitty Albatross Twins - there's just no point anymore.
But I think it's important to look at this. We can blame personnel decisions on weirdness coming down from Sather. Torts was given a shitty hand and probably feels pressure from his bosses to play the shitty veterans, cause they've got big contracts. It's easy to see Torts as the victim in that scheme, and the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But there's no way I can figure Sather is sending down the message of "scream at kids for dumb shit." That speaks to a bad prioritization, and it seems like something that comes right from the coach. And it's especially concerning, given that it seems so contrary to exactly what we hired Torts for in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment