OK, so here are a couple of things I wanted to talk about, but then Puck Daddy wrote about them this morning, so you should just go read that instead.
First, following up on my feelings about the Asham-Glass nonsense is Ryan Lambert's piece on opening draw fights. Lambert rightly blames the away team's coach for starting the mess, rightly calls out Torts for placing exactly the wrong blame, and rightly claims that these kinds of fights never actually affect the game. He also says a bunch of other right things (and then one wrong thing about automatic penalties). So go read that.
Second, this jingoistic bullshit about Nail Yakupov's goal celebration is handled perfectly by Greg Wyshynski here. Yakupov scored a crazy-exciting goal last night and celebrated it in a crazy-exciting way. But, he's Russian, not Canadian, so everyone said shit like "act like you've scored before" and "why wasn't he celebrating nearer to his teammates" and other thinly-veiled "I don't like when Europeans are good at hockey" shit. Wyshynski says everything correct about this issue, the summary of which is "it's probably actually pretty good for the NHL if hockey is portrayed as a fun thing," so go read that, too.
So what does that leave for me to talk about? Well, there's always how the Rangers look terrible, yeah? Let's do that. This team has played one good period out of 12 now, and I don't have the time and you don't have the patience for me to talk about all the things I'm angry about. So let's cherry-pick a couple.
One thing I'm angry about: Salary math. I know I've ranted about this before, but Michael Del Zotto is making too much money. Even in a team-wide dogshit performance like last night, he managed to make more than a couple of noticeable gaffes that led to Lundqvist bailing him out. And while eating up 30 perfectly good seconds of a 5-on-3 by futzing around with the puck is something I would normally praise in a defenseman, I'm not so hot on it when he's doing it as the point man on his own team's 5-on-3.
Here's the bottom line, people. I don't mean to pick just on him, as the whole team is sucking right now, but it's a numbers game. Michael Del Zotto is eating up $2.55 million to suck. Arron Asham is eating $1 million to do the same. Matt Gilroy is wearing a suit and tie in a box upstairs. Brandon Prust is making $2.5 million in Montréal, Ruslan Fedotenko is making $1.75 million in Philadelphia, John Mitchell is making $1.1 million in Colorado, and Ranger fans are wondering where all our depth went.
Look, giving up Dubinsky and Anisimov definitely hurt this team's core. But we did it to get back real value, in Rick Nash. Prust, Fedotenko, and Mitchell all left for better contracts than we were willing to offer, so we could spend that money elsewhere. And while I'm not suggesting we should have spent $5.35 million to wrap up all three of those guys, we absolutely could have let Del Zotto walk, not signed Arron Asham, and put Gilroy in Del Zotto's spot. Gilroy would perform almost as well as DZ, if not better, and the $3.55 million saved could have kept us, at least, Brandon Prust and John Mitchell.
Or does anyone think this team wouldn't be obviously and immediately better if we swapped Del Zotto and Asham for Gilroy, Prust, and Mitchell?
Another thing I'm angry about: The coach is perpetually angry about the wrong things. We already covered yesterday how Arron Asham did something meaningless and then Torts got mad that everyone else thought it was meaningless. But then, in last night's post-game presser, the man of few words offered these choice ones: "Our top line simply didn't play well."
So, let me summarize this shit in a run-on sentence, coach. Hold on tight, it's kinda dense. One night after your top 5 forwards averaged 21:28 (which you said was because you weren't yet comfortable rolling 4 lines) and won the game all by themselves, combining for 6 points and a +7 rating on the Rangers' 4 goals and for 19 of the Rangers' 33 shots, you gave those same 5 guys an even higher average of 21:39 (more ice time than half your defensemen got), and the team looked exhausted and was beaten physically and in every footrace, and despite all that, those 5 guys still netted a point on the Rangers' only goal and were responsible for 10 of their 19 shots, and you think the problem is that your top guys didn't play well enough?
Do I live in a different reality than the coach does? This isn't just having a wrong opinion, this is downright lunacy. It is maniacal to think this. If you draw this conclusion from these facts, you are going to fail your SATs. Even if you weren't the guy who is directly responsible for everyone's ice time, this shit would stupefy a Vulcan. How are you going to correct this team's course if you think things this batty?
Too much anger, not enough time. Tomorrow night, Leafs. Two days later, Flyers again. Two days after that, Pens again. All 3 are at home. Our first four games may not really tell a story yet, but these 7 together sure will. So, let's see how those go.
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