What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

Let me start by saying I generally do not dislike the Montreal Canadiens. They're generally a likable group, playing a fast, whistle-to-whistle game. It's impossible not to love everything P.K. Subban does. And in their recent 2nd-round matchup against the Bruins, it was easy to feel like the good guys won, with Milan Lucic playing the role of "a bully scorned."

I will even go so far as to say the on-ice stuff, if you squint hard enough, has been pretty reasonable so far this series. Yes, Prust's hit on Stepan was unacceptably late, and referees Marc Joanette and Kevin Pollock have no imaginable excuses for missing it entirely, but even Prust has said publicly that the hit was late and that he deserves his suspension. Notwithstanding that hit, it hasn't been particularly one-sided: a few late or high hits here and there (Weaver's hit on Brassard in Game 1, Pouliot's hit on Emelin in Game 2), but nothing you wouldn't expect from a conference finals. That Weaver's hit was unpenalized and resulted in injury, and that Pouliot's was penalized and didn't, speaks more about inconsistent officiating and luck than it does about either of these teams.

(And lest anyone think I'm ignoring it, yes, linesman Scott Driscoll inexplicably manhandled Carcillo on his way to send him to the box, but Carcillo pushed back. Twice. And you just can't punch a cop. Even if he is being a dick to you. He's got a badge. And a gun. Et cetera. And if 10 games is excessive (it is), it's at least in part due to Carcillo's reputation for being a fuck. And in fairness, while he has been great for us this season, he has been a fuck in the past. So it's hard to see that call and not, on some level, kinda get it. (Carcillo is appealing the length, and I would hope it will be knocked down a bit, but it will likely remain long enough that we won't see him in the Blueshirt again.))

So, with the exception of Prust's hit, about which he seems legitimately contrite, the biggest extracurricular problems this series have come from the on-ice officiating crew (particularly that of Game 3, all of whom should be taken off of every remaining playoff game this season), and not from the Habs or the Rangers on the ice. With all of that said, with the appropriate capitulation to the opposing team, I am thus left with the question:

What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

This entire goddamn series so far, what the fuck are they talking about? Let's start with the Price injury in Game 1. Kreider comes in hard, gets slashed from behind, goes down, and collides with Price. On his way back, Price's skate catches the pipe and his knee bends in a way knees shouldn't bend. Here is a helpful reminder:



That sucks! And after the game, Canadiens coach Michel Therrien reacted appropriately, by making the other team look like bad guys and standing up for his guy, without saying anything too crazy. Specifically, he said, "I reviewed the incident and obviously it was accidental contact, but let's put it this way: He didn't make much effort to avoid the contact." Sure, fine, I guess. But then, as you know, it was discovered that Price was seriously injured and would miss the remainder of the series. And then we all got on a train headed to Crazytown!

Once the injury was announced, Therrien, apparently unaware that microphones can remember things you said a whole day after you said them, reported to the press that "looking at the incident, you know, it's a reckless play. That's the truth. And Kreider, this is not the first time he's going at goalies, so you end up losing your best player." Look, dude, I get it. You lost a really valuable guy (not your best player, but when your backup is Peter Budaj, possibly your most valuable one). And making that a storyline is a really good way to get people's emotions high and distract the media from the 7-2 drubbing that was the only game result thus far. But seriously, one day ago you said it was "accidental contact." Those balls on sticks those people hold in front of your face at press conferences record this shit!

Anyway, on its own, this isn't that crazy - for all the above reasons, this is a smart move by Therrien. But it turns out that the train to Crazytown runs express, and you can't get off until you've actually reached Crazytown. After Game 2's loss, Therrien was complaining again, this time about the officiating, saying "You know what, to win a hockey game you need some breaks and we didn’t have any breaks yesterday. The Rangers got their breaks and they capitalized on their breaks. We didn't get some calls yesterday." Obviously merely counting penalties doesn't tell you the full story, but at a glance, the Canadiens had 4 power plays in Game 2 (they went 0 for 4) to the Rangers' 3 (1 for 3), and the Rangers' penalty list included one diving call.

Again, on its own, this isn't too meaningful, and the statement isn't too crazy. But rather than analyzing a game's worth of calls and non-calls, let's fast forward to Game 3, the game where Prust broke Stepan's jaw on a late hit and Carcillo got 10 games for shoving a linesman. 'Cause this is where the train crosses the county border from the Questionable Territories into the Lunatic Protectorate.

First, the Habs themselves get into it, by calling bullshit on Stepan's jaw being broken. Seriously. Because the Rangers hadn't yet announced Stepan's status as of yesterday (the surgery itself was last night), these ding-dongs decided that the "Stepan's jaw is broken" storyline was a lie. Speaking to the media, Danny Briere said that the Rangers' lack of report on Stepan means that the center's injury "seems a little fishy to [him]. It seems like a little bit of a game." (Vigneault's "fishy" report, incidentally, was "He's in the hospital right now recovering from surgery, so that's all I've got.") Brendan Gallagher (who, ironically, led the NHL in goalie interference penalties this season with 8, to Kreider's 2) doubled down with the clever diagnosis "He got up and he was yapping and yelling [after the play], so, I'm sure the jaw isn't hurting too much."

For the record, Stepan had a metal plate inserted into his jaw, and he will be unable to play tomorrow night. And for those of you with very slightly longer memories and a penchant for hypocrisy, after Price was injured in Game 1, he stayed in net to finish out the period. And when he was replaced, Therrien said it was due to the score. And the Canadiens didn't announce his status for Game 2 until a couple of hours before Game 2. I don't remember any Ranger claiming that Price's injury was fake there, when Therrien was doing what absolutely every professional sports coach does for absolutely every playoff injury, playing it close to the vest.

But Michel Therrien, captain of the Crazytown Express (do trains have captains?), was not about to be outdone by his players, and came to bat today with a strong showing of unprovoked threatening of an injured player! When asked by the French media about Brassard's possible return tomorrow night, Therrien acknowledged that Brass would likely be back, and then editorialized a bit, responding (in French), "We expect Derick Brassard to play and we know exactly where he's injured."

That's...like...a threat, right? There's no way that isn't a threat? Like, "yes, Brassard will be back [from the 3 games he missed after our guy's late hit], but don't worry, we will be targeting his injury"? Thinking this makes me feel like I'm being biased, but is there some non-disgusting way to interpret this that I'm not thinking of? I'm fully open to suggestions here.

Anyway, from there, it just gets weirder, with reports today that Therrien kicked (or tried to kick?) Ulf Samuelsson and later Glen Sather out of the Habs' practice at the Garden today, citing some "Gentlemen's Agreement" that team personnel never watches their playoff opponent's practice on an off-day (though it's allowed on a game day (?)). It appears the Rangers didn't know anything about this "Gentlemen's Agreement"? Is that possibly because it's a thing Therrien just made up? I honestly have no idea what is happening here.

So what is going on? Was the hockey itself not interesting enough for Coach Therrien's standards of a conference final series? Is he jealous of the better hockey being played in the Western Conference final, so he's trying to spice things up? What is going on? What the fuck are the Canadiens talking about?

Which roster is stronger?

So, this morning, my girlfriend's father emailed my girlfriend and me a copy of the 2013-'14 playoff roster (and basic stats) side-by-side with the 2011-'12 edition, accompanied with a simple question: "Which roster is stronger?" A normal person would have replied with a sentence or two to start a conversation. Instead, I wrote this.

Oh, wow. Great question. Strap in.

Let's start with an easier one: which team is better? I don't know how much of hockey's "advanced stats" you're familiar with, so here's some context. If you already know what "Corsi For Percentage" is, then please skip this paragraph. For our purposes, let's accept some basic things the "advanced hockey stat nerds" have been more or less statistically proving for a few years:
1) The best way to measure how "good" a team is is to measure its puck possession. Scoring goals (and not allowing goals) is how you win, but goals are sometimes fluky, and "how much you have the puck" is a better long-term indicator of likelihood to win than actual past goal differential. Put another way: scoring goals may or may not mean you're likely to keep scoring goals; having the puck is a pretty good indicator you're going to be scoring goals.
2) Measuring "how much you have the puck" is really hard given the stats the NHL tabulates. No one tracks actual zone time or possession time. So, we have to try to represent possession time with what we do have. And what we do have is shots on goal, shots blocked (meaning shots you take that the other guys block), and shots that miss the net. Adding these up gives us a crude but decent indicator of how much you have the puck: you can't be attempting shots without having the puck. In a just world, we would add these 3 things up and call them "shot attempts," but instead we call them "Corsi," to confuse everyone.
3) So, a really good simple dirty way to tell how good a team is is to compare its Corsi to its opponents' Corsi (in games against them). To make it easy to compare across different games, we represent it as a percentage: (our Corsi) divided by (our Corsi plus our opponents Corsi). We call that "Corsi For Percentage," or "CF%." All it means is: what percentage of the total shot attempts in the games were taken by our team? For example, in one game, I attempt 10 shots and you attempt 30 shots. My CF% for that game would be 25% and yours would be 75%. This is very simple, it works as a good stand-in for possession time, and so it works as a good indicator of how good a team is. As a rule of thumb, anything under 50% means "worse than their opponents," and above 50% means "better than their opponents."

So, the first thing to measure is: which team is better? At 5-on-5, the 2011-'12 Rangers had a CF% of 47.7%. The 2013-'14 Rangers had a 5v5 CF% of 52.4%. That is a very significant improvement (for reference, the range tends to be from mid-to-lower-40s to mid-to-upper-50s for a team for the season). The stat "Fenwick" is like Corsi but it subtracts out the shots that were blocked. The Rangers' Fenwick For Percentage saw a similar increase: 2011-'12 had a 5v5 FF% of 49.4%; 2013-'14 had a 52.6%. Finally, the 2013-'14 Rangers' 5v5 shooting percentage (percent of shots on goal that go in) was an abysmal 6.66% - third-worst in the league. Meanwhile, the 2011-'12 squad shot at 8.30% 5-on-5, for 8th-best in the NHL. It's generally accepted and statistically supported that shooting percentage, except in a few rare cases, will regress to the mean over time, and is largely attributable to luck. So, there's an argument that the 2011-'12 team was luckier than this year's team, in terms of goals actually going in the net, which means their success was a little less based on skill than 2013-'14. All in all, yes, it's clear that the 2013-'14 team is better.

But that's not exactly what you meant, right? The interesting question is "is the new team better because of the new roster?" The alternative, I suppose, is "is it better because of improvements in the players who were on both squads?" Let's start by looking at the roster changes you sent:

2011-'12 F: Callahan, Gaborik, Anisimov, Fedotenko, Prust, Dubinsky, Mitchell, Rupp
2011-'12 D: Del Zotto, Bickel, Eminger

2013-'14 F: St. Louis, Brassard, Zuccarello, Pouliot, Carcillo, Moore, Nash, Dorsett
2013-'14 D: Klein, Moore, Diaz

(I am throwing out Miller and Fast because they played so little time compared to the rest of the list.)

At a glance, the lists look pretty even, with a slight advantage to 2013-'14 squad:
Scoring up front: The only pure scoring talent on the 2011'12 list is Gaborik, while this season boasts both St. Louis and Nash. Advantage: 2013-'14
Middle of the pack: Callahan, Anisimov, Fedotenko, Prust, and Dubinsky stack up pretty evenly with Brassard, Zuccarello, and Pouliot. 2011-'12 has more of those guys, and they hit more, but we know how good the Brass-Zucc-Pou line has looked. Advantage: Even
Guy who's better than everyone thinks he is: Dominic Moore is our new John Mitchell. Advantage: Even
Dumb idiots: 2013-'14 has 2. 2011-'12 has 1. Advantage: Even
Defensive scoring: Michael Del Zotto was sometimes an actual threat from the blue line, when he wasn't a liability. 2013-'14 has no equivalent. Advantage: 2011-'12.
Defensive actual defense: 2011-'12 boasts 3 occasional liabilities. 2013-'14 is 3 completely adequate guys. Advantage: 2013-'14
Net advantage: 2013-'14

But let's see how true that is by looking at the 5-on-5 CF% of each player on these lists. This is just like the team's 5v5 CF% calculation, but it only counts when that player is on the ice. Much like the team calculation, as a dumb rule of thumb, above 50% is good and below 50% is bad.

2011-'12
53.4 Mitchell
50.3 Dubinsky
48.4 Anisimov
47.9 Gaborik
46.8 Callahan
44.7 Prust
44.2 Fedotenko
41.4 Rupp

47.9 Bickel
47.2 Del Zotto
45.1 Eminger

2013-'14
55.1 Pouliot
54.2 Nash
53.8 Zuccarello
53.5 Brassard
51.9 St. Louis
50.5 Dorsett
48.2 Moore
47.5 Carcillo

58.0 Diaz
51.6 Moore
50.5 Klein

Wow! Those numbers are not even close. On the 2011-'12 squad, only Mitchell and Dubinsky had scores above 50; only the 2013-'14 squad, only Dominic Moore and Carcillo were below 50. To explain those numbers further, we can look at a statistic called "Zone Start Percentage." This measures what percentage of your shifts you start in the offensive zone. The lower the number, the more often you're on the ice in the defensive zone (which may, in some cases, explain why your score is lower). If your ZS% is high AND your CF% is low, then you're used in the offensive zone all the time but your opponents still attempt more shots than you whenever you're on the ice. That'd be really bad.

Dominic Moore's ZS% was 25.2% this season, meaning he started 3/4 of his shifts in the defensive zone. In that light, his 48.2% CF% doesn't sound so bad. Similarly, Carcillo's ZS% was 32.6. So, Moore and Carcillo may not have been dragging their team down as much as it seems. (On the flip side, this helps explain Diaz's high score - his ZS% was 75.6%.) Over on the 2011-'12 squad, Dubinsky's ZS% was 41.7%, and Mitchell's was 45.8%, meaning they both started more in the defensive zone than the offensive zone: their higher scores are not explained away by their zone starts; they really were that much better than the rest of their team.

But something smells in this analysis: if the numbers on the changeover players are that much worse, the numbers on the common players are probably worse also. Maybe the changed players aren't entirely to blame. So let's look at the 5-on-5 CF% numbers for the roster players who stuck around, from 2011-'12 to 2013-'14

Boyle 48.1 -> 46.9
Hagelin 52.6 -> 54.5
Richards 48.2 -> 54.1
Stepan 46.5 -> 53.1

Girardi 48.4 -> 49.9
McDonagh 49.0 -> 51.1
Stralman 48.3 -> 56.5
Staal 44.0 -> 54.4

(I'm eliminating Kreider here because I don't know what to do with him. He didn't play nearly enough in 2011-'12 for his numbers to be useful, but it doesn't seem fair to count him as a "roster change" for 2013-'14, since he was on the team in 2011-'12. So, I just left him out entirely.)

Remember, what we're trying to learn is how much each of these players is now bringing the team up, as compared to the roster change. Boyle's CF% went down (requisite with getting harder zone starts), so it wasn't him. Hagelin, Girardi, and McDonagh each improved a little bit, but probably not enough to make a huge difference - and, all three of their changes were aligned with getting significantly more offensive zone time. Hagelin's ZS% went from 51.9 to 62.1, Girardi's from 44.7 to 47.1, and McDonagh's from 43.1 to 48.3. Those are right in line with their CF% increases, so it's probably not them either.

That leaves Richards, Stepan, Stralman, and Staal. All 4 improved significantly, quite possibly pulling the rest of the team up with them. A look at Richards's ZS% shows an increase from 54.1% offensive in 2011-'12 to 66.4% in 2013-'14. That's a healthy boost, and it probably explains some, but not all, of Richards's CF% increase. The other 3, on the other hand, all saw harder zone starts in 2013'14 and nonetheless but up significantly better CF%. So, the team's improvement can certainly at least be attributed to an improvement in Stepan, Staal, and Stralman, and probably also, to a lesser degree, to Richards.

This brings up a question for me. Stralman and Staal are paired together this season, so I'd expect their numbers to be pretty similar. But, because we watch the games, we feel like Stralman is probably dragging Staal down, and Staal bringing Stralman up. This could help explain why they're both on this list. Are we right? To help find out, we can look at each player's 5-on-5 CF% when he's on the ice without the other one, compared to his CF% with. When we do that, we find a surprising result:

2011-'12
Staal without Stralman: 43.9%
Stralman without Staal: 49.0%
Together: 45.0%

2013-'13
Staal without Stralman: 48.6%
Stralman without Staal: 56.1%
Together: 56.2%

I did not see that coming, and I don't immediately know how to explain it. Regardless, the original point stands: improvement has come from within the retained players, in Stepan, Staal, and Stralman, and to a lesser extent Richards.

So, how much of the Rangers' improvement can be attributed to these 4 dudes, and how much to the roster changes? That's a harder question to answer, but we can make some smart guesses by comparing the individual players' CF% to the team's. If the player's individual CF% is higher than the team's, it stands to reason he is bringing the team up; otherwise, he is bringing the team down. So let's go back and look at the roster changes again, with the team average for that season inserted into the list.

2011-'12
53.4 Mitchell
50.3 Dubinsky
48.4 Anisimov
47.9 Gaborik
47.9 Bickel
47.7 Team Average
47.2 Del Zotto
46.8 Callahan
45.1 Eminger
44.7 Prust
44.2 Fedotenko
41.4 Rupp

2013-'14
58.0 Diaz
55.1 Pouliot
54.2 Nash
53.8 Zuccarello
53.5 Brassard
52.4 Team Average
51.6 J. Moore
51.9 St. Louis
50.5 Klein
50.5 Dorsett
48.2 D. Moore
47.5 Carcillo

Counting the players on each side of the line doesn't do us much good, but looking at who is on which side does. In 2011-'12, outside of Mitchell and Dubinsky (who were genuine assets, as we saw), the only 3 players bringing the team up were Anisimov, Gaborik, and Bickel. Guys whom we thought of as producers on that team - Del Zotto, Callahan, Prust, Fedotenko - are all below the line. In 2012-'13, the main names bringing the number down are Dorsett, Dominic Moore, and Carcillo. All 3 of those guys had ZS% below 35%, so we expect lower numbers. (To contrast, Rupp, Fedotenko, and Prust averaged a ZS% of 37.8; Dorsett, Moore, and Carcillo averaged 30.8).

St. Louis's number is weird, because it was generated mostly on a different team. Tampa Bay's 5-on-5 CF% this season was 51.0%, which St. Louis actually brought up. So it's hard to measure him against the Rangers' average meaningfully. That leaves only John Moore and Kevin Klein as the new roster guys bringing us down. Compare that to the list of guys bringing the 2011-'12 number down, and I think it's safe to conclude that 2013-'14's roster is better.

So, I'd conclude that the 2013-'14 team is definitely better than the 2011-'12, and that that's due in part to the improvement of Stepan, Staal, Stralman, and Richards, and in part to the improvement of the roster, which is itself on average better.

What It Means to Be a Fan (Or: The (A?) Melodramatic Post)

"Fan," short for fanatic: a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal.

I don't know what I looked like from the outside as I watched the final minutes of Game 3 from one of my favorite local bars here in Pittsburgh. I am rarely self-aware enough to know what I look like from the outside at the best of times, and Monday night, as I watched my team slowly lose the 5th playoff game they'd played in 7 nights, despite dominating possession time, scoring chances, shots on goal, etc. and having the better goalie, was not the best of times.

What I know is that when I looked up after the game ended, I saw two friends of mine, Pens fans both, staring down the table at me with pity on their faces, because I looked so goddamn distraught it was depressing them, even in the midst of their team's win. I'm not sure what that means, but I think it's safe to say that it probably puts me in the "excessive and single-minded zeal" category.

Being a fanatic is a double-edged sword. It means we get real emotional highs and lows from every game, which is why we do it. Doubly so in the Second Season. But that passion can also get in the way of our actual understanding of the sport we love to watch. It clouds our judgment. So it's a balancing act: how do I get to get up and scream and completely deflate with my team, without it making me so wrong that I'm crying "cheap shot" any time the opposition comes within 3 feet of my team captain?

So it's with attempted self-awareness that I make the statement: through 3 games in this series, despite being down 2 games to 1, I believed that the Rangers were the better team. Going into the series, I believed that the Rangers, being a better possession team than the Penguins, would ultimately have an easier time of them than they did of the Flyers, who beat them up for 2 weeks. I believed that Game 1 was a real triumph over a bad schedule, and was ultimately an evenly matched game. I believed that following that game, the Rangers would only get better. I believed that Game 2 was a disappointing bump in the road, a game the Rangers would respond to at home the following night. I believed that Game 3's result was a fluke. I believed that if you offered Dan Bylsma the opportunity to play Game 3 four more times to finish out the series, he would reject the offer, because more often than not, if the game goes like that, the Rangers win. I don't know how true these things were, but as a fan, I believed them.

Rationally, I have felt very positive about these Rangers this season. They had the puck more often than their opponents, and they turned that into success more often than not. They finished the regular season with a FF% of 53.6% and a CF% of 53.2%, both good for 6th overall in the league, behind only fantastic teams (Bruins, Kings, Sharks, Blackhawks) and the New Jersey Devils, which I have no good explanation for. Their PDO was 98.7, a tie for 5th-worst in the NHL, suggesting that their results had room to go up from there. All of which ultimately resulted in a team that finished in 2nd place in its division (and that ranked 3rd in its conference in goal differential), and with me feeling relatively good about its chances.

And so, because Ranger fans, having been treated to the Stanley Cup at the literal once-in-a-lifetime rate of once in the last 73 (going on 74!) seasons, do not know how to feel good about their team, I've found myself defending the Rangers to Ranger fans a lot this season.

"No, John Tortorella was not a better coach just because he was an angrier coach. Yes, 'score goals' is a better coaching strategy than 'block shots.' No, losing in Game 7 of the Finals doesn't mean you don't have 'what it takes.'"

"Yes, Rick Nash is a better hockey player than Brandon Dubinsky. Yes, 10 times out of 10. Yes, even if he has never thrown a Gatorade cooler."

"No, Ryan Callahan is not worth 6 million dollars 6 years from now with a no-trade clause. No, not even for his Heart. No, 'intangibles' are not a real thing."

"Please stop spelling Brad Richards's name with a dollar sign like he's Microsoft and you're a 15-year-old in the 90's."

And so on. Sports narratives like these appeal to our fandom. They make big story lines out of what are often just statistical aberrations. And that's why they're so, so prevalent despite being so, so wrong. None of this is ground-breaking. Everyone rational already understands this, and everyone else is hopeless. So what's my point?

My point is: tonight, all that went away. Watching tonight's game, I felt like all of the Ranger fans I've been calling wrong all season. Like Al Trautwig said post-game, "I cannot believe how badly the Rangers played tonight." This Game 4 loss looked to me like so many other losses always seem to look to so many other Ranger fans.

Tonight, I watched the Penguins out-possess the Rangers like crazy in "as close to a must-win [as it gets]," despite holding the lead. Tonight, I threw around words like "gutless," and I just wanted to see the Rangers throw around their damn bodies. Tonight, I wanted Ryan Callahan to take the place of Martin St. Louis, and I speculated about Ryan McDonagh still being injured from Burrows's cheap shot. After a Flyers series I spent dismissing the "can't win a playoff game when they're up" "statistic" as small sample size garbage, tonight I feel like the Rangers are a team that "just don't have what it takes to win when it counts."

(Exception: The Ranger-fans-booing-Rick-Nash thing. Guys. Seriously. The dude leads the league in shots on goal in the playoffs. He leads the Rangers in Corsi differential, Fenwick differential, and shot differential. He is, basically, the only forward consistently doing his job. Guys, you are watching a game in which your team only directed 38 shots anywhere toward the net, and you are booing the guy who was single-handedly responsible for 29% of them. What are you doing.)

The Rangers picked a very bad time to play their worst game in months (and yes, this game was significantly worse than Game 6 of the Flyers series, by every reasonable measure). And while that doesn't mean it's any more rational to fire Vigneault and go hire Barry Melrose or to buy out Rick Nash at the end of the season than it was 6 hours ago, it's still important, and it still fucking blows. The Rangers were awful tonight, to a man, to a degree that would sound exaggerated if I heard anyone else describe it the way I would describe it. As a fan, I watched this game and I believe that the Rangers' effort and desperation were not where they needed to be. I believe that, results notwithstanding, the Rangers are in very serious trouble if this is how they look through 60 minutes of a game like this one. I don't know how true those things are, but as a fan, I believe them.

The numbers don't tell a much better story than the emotions tonight. Despite trailing for all but the first 2:31 of the game, the Rangers never even had the damn puck tonight, posting a Shots For Percentage of 35.7%, a Fenwick For Percentage of 35.2%, and a Corsi For Percentage of 36.5%. Those numbers wouldn't be great if they were the team that had led all game; as it stands, they're atrocious. Oh, and the Rangers haven't scored a power play goal in over 66 minutes of power play time - more than an entire game's worth. That's plainly, objectively awful.

So now, my team is coming back to the city where I live. In all likelihood, I am going to once again pay way too much money for the privilege of seeing them live. And now, thanks to tonight's debacle of a "contest," I'm approaching it with the dread of what now feels (to my irrational, fanatical heart, at least) likelier than not: that, just like I did 6 years ago, I'll be sitting in the Penguins' home arena (which was a different arena last time), watching Game 5 of the Rangers-Penguins second-round playoff series end in a handshake line that sends the Penguins to the conference finals and the Rangers home for the summer. Some things just don't change. And maybe for certain teams, that's what it means to be a fan.

On captain swapping

This one time (this afternoon) I sent an email full of my thoughts on the Callahan/St. Louis trade to, like, 75% of my readership? Anyway, here they are, because isn't that why I still have this thing?

Scattered thoughts:

-- No doubt, St. Louis is legitimately great, even at this age. 61 points in 62 games so far this season, and most of that was without Stamkos. He's a 38-year-old, small, scrappy forward, so it's hard to imagine that lasting for too much longer, but his deal ends at the end of next season. I would absolutely sign a 2-year, $5.625-mil deal with St. Louis right now. The Rangers get significantly better with this deal.

-- It is very hard to see Ryan Callahan go. He's my first player-I-have-a-jersey-of loss since Adam Graves became a Shark. Thus really finally ends the "Duballahan" years of lovable, tough, "3rd-line" forwards brought up in our system that made the franchise respectable again.

-- With that said, the 6 years at $6 million offer was already a bit of an overpayment for what Callahan brings. Callahan's camp reportedly came all the way down to 6 years at $6.25 million, but would not budge on the no-movement clause. It's very hard to justify paying a 34-year-old Ryan Callahan north of $6 million dollars and not even being able to trade or re-assign him.

-- So, given that we won't have Callahan 3 months from now anyway, trading him straight-up for a year and change of an elite talent like St. Louis seems like a no-brainer. It sucks, and it's very hard on the fans and players - Staal said they all kind of expected a contract with Callahan to get done, and Brassard said the locker room was "not good" today. (Here's hoping the professional athletes can shake that off.) But, for the team, it seems like the obvious right thing to do - in a straight-up trade, the team gets better in the short term and has less potentially bad commitment in the long term.

-- That said, we gave up too much in this trade. In addition to Callahan, we gave up our 2014 1st-rounder and a 2015 2nd-rounder which, if we win 2 playoff rounds this season, becomes another 1st-rounder. Tampa only loses picks back if Callahan re-signs with them, which he will not (more on that later). That's a lot of draft pick to give up to briefly upgrade Callahan to St. Louis, even though it is an upgrade. If the Rangers win the Cup this season or next, obviously those picks become worth it. But, given that we're worse than at least 2 teams in our conference, which is the shitty conference, it's hard to immediately justify giving up potentially two first-rounders for this upgrade.

-- Ultimately, I think the Rangers were between a rock and a hard place: either have Ryan Callahan for too much money on a no-movement clause through age 35, or give up these high picks? In Sather's position, I'm not totally sure I'd do either - I'd probably just keep Callahan for now and let him walk in July - but given the relative age of a lot of our best players right now, I definitely understand why Sather did what he did.

-- Callahan will not re-sign with Tampa or sign back with us at this point. He will probably go to Buffalo, who will probably give him 7 years at $7 million with a no-movement clause, or something. And never win anything, because that team is awful.

-- It is a lot less likely now that we will buy out Richards. And that's okay for now - he's been very solid this year. That contract is going to be hurting us a lot by 2020, but we already knew that. If the contract sounds crazy-long to you (and it is), remember that it ends at the same time Callahan's proposed 6-year deal would have ended.

-- Not sure who wears the 'C'. If it were up to me, I'd give it to Girardi or Lundqvist. It will likely go to Staal or Richards.

-- The last time the New York Rangers traded their active captain was June 30, 2003, when they traded Mark Messier to the San Jose Sharks for "future considerations." Those future considerations became the Sharks' 4th-rounder in 2004 (the draft that happened just before the season-long lockout). The pick ended up being the 127th overall in that draft, which the Rangers used to pick... say it with me now... Ryan Callahan.

I made up a new statistic

I call it the Detrimental Idiot Quotient, or DIQ. It measures what a waste of space a big dumb idiot is by comparing the penalty time a dude incurs to his total ice time. It's my favorite kind of statistic in that it is totally unitless: it compares a measurement of time to another measurement of time, so it's merely a ratio. DIQ is calculated by dividing Penalties In Minutes by Time On Ice (in minutes). So a DIQ of 1.000 would mean that a player incurred one penalty minute for every minute he played.

For example, Sunday night, when the Rangers took the Flyers all the way to school and back, Dan Girardi took a 2-minute interference penalty in the first period, and he logged a total of 22:09 on the night, so Girardi's DIQ for the night would be 0.090. Most players, who were not penalized, had a DIQ of 0.000. Meanwhile, Luke Schenn had a fight in the second along with a roughing and a 10-minute misconduct in the 3rd, for a total of 17 PIM in a game in which he played 16:31, for a DIQ of 1.029. As you can see, any DIQ over 1 is a really big DIQ.

Back of the napkin: league average PIM/game among the 30 NHL teams so far this season is, oddly, exactly what it was throughout 2013: 11.09. (Just trust me, I looked it up and have since lost the page.) Split over 18 skaters, that's a league-wide average of 0.616 PIM/game. Of course, average TOI/game must be (close enough to) 16.667 (300 man-minutes, 18 skaters). So, the league average DIQ should be 0.037: on average, an NHL skater earns 0.037 penalty minutes per minute of ice time. Anything over this is an above average DIQ.

Why did I make up this statistic? (It wasn't actually to make a bunch of DIQ size jokes. That was secondary. But worth it.) I wanted to put into perspective last night's stat line belonging to colossal waste of colossal space Tom Sestito, and I was not disappointed. Last night, Sestito earned a DIQ of 1620.000, nearly 44,000 times the league average.

What a DIQ!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOALie controversy

Like so many T-shirts in Times Square, I heart New York. I heart New York for a whole lot of reasons, and a lot of them are dumb, but one of the not-dumb ones is that the city is the omnipresent cultural trendsetter. Everything comes from New York. Clothes, theatre, music, food - whatever's trendy in the US started being trendy in New York. So it's always satisfying and intriguing to see the rare cultural phenomenon which spreads over the continent before it hits the city. Well, modern anthropologists such as myself are in luck, as a trend that has been sweeping NHL fan bases for years has finally touched down in Manhattan: the Goalie Controversy.

Though arguments over which of your team's netminders is better have been a part of hockey for a long time, it seems like recently you can't go a few months without some team being in some crisis between the pipes, real or imagined. Of course, the best-known Goalie Controversy in recent memory was resolved over the summer, when Canucks fans were either relieved or appalled to learn that one of their two very good goalies, Cory Schneider, had been traded to a Devils team desperate for a goalie under 40 (or at least one who probably hasn't fucked his wife's sister), leaving room for their other very good goalie, Roberto Luongo. But there's been no shortage of other goalie arguments around the league over the last few years: Fleury vs Vokoun, Bernier vs Reimer, Halak vs Price, Halak vs Elliott, every man for himself in Philly... they run the gamut from "our team has no good goaltending prospects" to "our team has two good goalies and we, the fans, have decided to irrationally hate one of them," and they're always a hot topic of discussion, where "discussion" means hockey fans pretending to be psychologists and ignoring statisticians.

The recipe for a Goalie Controversy is not so different from that of most other invented sports narratives: take a narrow enough window of time that the sample within it fits some very specific trend, add an emotionally charged description of that trend, and then claim it applies to the subject at large. Season with a dash of the phrase "head case," and you've got yourself a Goalie Controversy! For example, in Pittsburgh, Marc-Andre Fleury (career save percentage .910, playoff save percentage .903) is a head case, but knows what it takes to win the big games, while Tomas Vokoun (career .917, playoff .928) couldn't win when it counts.

And that recipe has finally landed on Broadway. This season, the Rangers finally did away with their charming, gorgeous-eyed, terrible backup in Martin Biron, leaving room for young stud Cam Talbot to finally get some NHL starts. The kid has played very, very well, and the new coach isn't afraid to actually use his backup, which has led some fans to question the heartiness of the Kingdom. This came to something of a head this morning, when it became clear that Talbot would start for the second game in a row. So this is where I tell you why you're worried, why it's fine, and what this might actually mean.

Why you're worried
First of all, Talbot is playing a lot more than we're used to during the reign of the King. In his first 5 full seasons, Lundqvist never played fewer than 68 regular season games (playing 70 twice, 72 once, and 73 once), and after a brief reprieve in 2011-12, in which he played only 62, he returned in the lockout-shortened season to play 43 of 48 (on pace for another 73). This season, including tonight, he'll have started only 19 of 28, on pace for a career-low (in full seasons) 56 games. That's low for any starter, but it's extremely low for Lundqvist.

And the games he's played haven't gone too well. Lundqvist is posting an 8-11 record on the season, compared to Talbot's 6-1. Looking at those records, it'd be easy for you to conclude that Talbot is playing better hockey right now. And you wouldn't necessarily be wrong: the King has allowed 46 goals on 553 shots (.917), while Talbot has allowed only 11 on 198 (.944). Lundqvist isn't at the top of his game right now, and Talbot certainly appears to be. Searching for extra-hockey explanations, it's easy to find some: the Queen (which is what I assume Mrs. Lundqvist is called) recently gave birth to the Prince (which is what I assume their child is called), so maybe he's distracted. It's a contract year, and the Rangers' future with Lundqvist is not yet clear. Maybe he needs to play 70+ games a season to feel good enough about himself to play his best. Maybe the new coaching staff doesn't fit with him. And so on.

Why it's fine
That's all bullshit. We don't have to get into why win-loss record is a terrible way to judge a player, since it's something a whole team does. When the disparity is that strong (Talbot is 6-1!), it's easy to start feeling like it's one guy's fault, but that's nuts. Also, Talbot's opponents have been the Canucks, the Predators, the Canadiens, the Blue Jackets, the Islanders, the Red Wings, and the Flyers - of those, only Detroit and Montreal are playoff teams right now. Yes, Talbot's .944 is very impressive, but he's only faced about 36% of the shots Lundqvist has, and from generally subpar teams. Come talk to me when that save percentage stays consistent over another dozen games against teams like the Bruins, Penguins, Ducks, Sharks, and Blues. Until then, there is no question who the starter on this team is.

And here's the thing, you guys: it's a good thing when you have a reliable backup so your starter doesn't have to play so much. Remember that reprieve season I told you about, 2011-12, when Lundqvist only played 62 regular season games? It was the best season of his career. He posted a .930 save percentage, averaged fewer than 2 goals allowed per game, and won the Vezina. I'm not saying more rest is the only ingredient for that kind of success, but it sure as hell isn't going to hurt.

What this might actually mean
There's no doubt that the King remains one of the best goalies in the league. But his numbers, while still good enough that basically any NHL team would want him (.917 is nothing to be embarrassed about), are not quite as superhuman as we're used to. To be sure, he's not playing his best hockey right now. And that is okay! It is December! He is likelier to remain very, very good for the next few seasons than he is to settle into mediocrity.

But. This offseason, his contract will expire, as will those of some other key Rangers. Lundqvist would be the hottest free agent goalie in a very long time, and he will likely command a 7- or 8-year deal at around $10 million per year. Conventional wisdom to date has been that, as one of the few elite goalies in the NHL, he'd be worth that (even if 5 years from now, depending on the cap, it could start to look ugly), and that the Rangers should do their best to get it settled before he hits the open market. But, if the King is starting to look only very, very good, then that becomes a more interesting question. The going rate for a very good goalie is a sight less than $80 million. Even if he has been the face of the franchise for almost a decade, even if he's often been the only reason the team has been respectable, let alone competitive - would Lundqvist really be worth $10 million a year for 8 years, in an offseason in which we have to sign Ryan Callahan and Dan Girardi, if he's only very, very good?

It's way too early in the season to be asking that question, of course, and so the question isn't really the point. The point is that even if you are concerned about the King's "meager" .917 so far this season, you still shouldn't be asking whether or not he's about to be replaced by Cam Talbot; you should be asking whom we're signing next summer.

Unfounded Trade Plan: Go!

Last night, after the Rangers' almost-but-not-quite-enough loss to yet another superior team from the superior conference, I went out dumpster-diving, and I found an old, beat-up rumor mill. I took it home, cleaned it up, and guess what: it's still got juice! So, I'm trying the old thing out today. Let's see if it still works!

Of course, imaginary fan-created trade proposals are dumb, and this one will be no different. Generally they're dumb because, for some reason, no fan of any sports team is comfortable with the idea that you have to give up good assets to get good assets. Sure, once in a while, you trade Scott Gomez and two assholes for 4 pieces including Ryan McDonagh and the guy you can trade for Brandon Prust. But usually, your plans to trade your team's 4th line left wing, 7th defenseman, and 20-year-old AHL goalie for Sidney Crosby and Marc-Andre Fleury because "the Penguins have goalie troubles" probably aren't going to pan out.

Now, with that said, here is my brilliant proposal to trade our 4th line left wing and 7th defenseman.

No, wait, where are you going? Hear me out. For the first time in a while, the Rangers have some possibly vestigial pieces that might actually have some value.

When Rick Nash returns (which, by the way, really should not be on Tuesday to face the Big Bad Bruins in his first game back, please, regardless of how few goals we scored this weekend), he'll likely end up replacing Zuccarello on the Stepan line, sending Zucc down to replace either Miller or Pouliot at Moore's side (at least, that's what I'd do). Miller and Pouliot are playing similar hockey right now, showing occasional flashes of offensive brilliance while spending the majority of their time oscillating between mediocrity and defensive liability. So all things being equal, I'd be just as happy to sit one as the other.

But many things are not equal. Pouliot is a 27-year-old who has been on 5 NHL teams and 2 AHL teams since entering the league in 2006, his stint with the Rangers being his fourth "fresh start" in as many calendar years. Miller is a 20-year-old Rangers first-rounder fewer than 50 games into his career, fresh off of leading Team USA in both assists and points on its way to Gold in the World Juniors less than a year ago. Pouliot's on a 1-year, $1.3 million contract; Miller's is 2 years at less than $900,000 apiece, after which he remains a restricted free agent. It is far easier to invest a roster spot and its requisite patience for defensive lapses in Miller than in Pouliot. And with Powe, Pyatt, and Mashinter all capable of rotating in reliably in case of injury, Pouliot isn't the kind of guy worth carrying around to be a regular scratch. Like a backup goalie, you want your 13th forwards to be low-risk, even if they're relatively low-reward.

Meanwhile, back at the blue line, an interesting thing occurred. Michael Del Zotto, who is whatever the opposite of a fan favorite is, and who saw quite a bit of questionable (and indeed questioned) ice time under Coach Tortorella, was a healthy scratch on Saturday night, making way for Justin Falk, who Wikipedia informs me shares my birthday. Falk, nothing special, nonetheless played solidly enough to remain in the lineup the following night. I'm not saying we've seen the last of Del Zotto in Broadway Blue, but it's clear that, with Staal and Stralman as Vigneault's "offensive pair" (and I can't believe I'm saying this, but Stralman's actually been pretty good lately), it's clear that the Rangers can get by just fine without DZ to round out the bottom pair. Even if he should be on the ice instead of Falk, if your top 5 D-men are McDonagh, Girardi, Staal, Stralman, and Moore, do you really need to pay him $2.55 million to do it? Like Pouliot, Del Zotto is the kind of player you don't keep around if you're not giving him good minutes - better to pay less for someone with lower highs and higher lows.

Understand: Del Zotto and Pouliot are not without their up sides, and on a team with a slightly different makeup, it would likely be worth keeping them around. But that's really the point: you have to give up value to get value in a trade, and these are two guys that might not be doing much for the Rangers, but who might have meaningful value for some other team. Not for a team with its shit together, mind you - which basically rules out everyone in the West that isn't from Tennessee or Alberta - but for a team that, for whatever reason, is willing to take some risks with some "enigmatic" pieces with high potential, and who might give up a single consistent resource in return. That's not so crazy, is it?

Right, so. Here's my proposal: offer Del Zotto and Pouliot to Philadelphia for Wayne Simmonds.

Eh? If they say no, maybe let them upgrade a lower pick one round as well, or possibly even throw one in? Am I crazy to think a team like Philly would go for a move like this? Am I crazy to think it would benefit the Rangers, not insignificantly? It sounds plausible to me. So, let's throw it in the mill and see what comes out.

Who Should Eat A Dick?

Tonight, there is a lot of anger going around here at Play Petr Prucha headquarters. Even the pint of Ben & Jerry's in front of me only makes me feel marginally better. So, it's time to attempt Plan B: rant impotently at the cold and unresponsive ear of the Internet. Some nights, some people are such butt scarves that, rather than whatever it is they do, they should probably just fuck off and eat a dick. Tonight, we look at those people in detail, in a new segment I like to call Who Should Eat A Dick?

First of all, Jim Dolan should eat a dick, for continuing to price actual hockey fans out of actual hockey games. I get that everything in New York is expensive, and I get that, as it's the city where all the culture and business come from, there are going to be a lot of attendees at MSG to Be At An Event, rather than to watch a game. But with lower bowl seating starting at $150 and going as high as $1300 per ticket, and many games selling out before individual tickets even go on sale (resale easily doubling a ticket's face value at the minimum), it's hard to feel like the crowd at the home opener was really as full of Ranger fans as it could have been. In years to come, will the Garden still feel like the Garden, or will the rowdier place to watch the game be the Flying Puck? If it's the latter, Dolan's the primary conspirator, and he should eat a dick.

On that note, Adam Richman should eat a dick. I had no idea who this guy was before tonight, but apparently he hosts some Food Network bullshit. Whatever: dude walked down the blue carpet for an interview pregame, as if he belonged there as much as Stemkowski, Matteau, or Greschner, talking a big game about how he used to work with Dave Maloney, and how tonight was "more than just a game" for him, a "part of [his] history." In the same breath, he got the Garden's nickname wrong (calling it "The World's Greatest Arena"), and said he couldn't wait to get inside and see the Broadway Blues. (Out of the mouths of babes, eh?) The whole thing stunk of "Dad trying to use modern slang to seem cool to teenage daughter, but obviously getting it wrong." Next time, if you wanna blend in with the fans, ditch the peacoat for a blueshirt, and try keeping your mouth shut. Until then, eat a dick.

Now, as for the player intros -- Oh, wait, I can't comment on that, because I didn't see it, because NBC Sports Network should eat a dick! My MSG feed was blacked out at exactly 7:30, because NBC Sports Network has exclusive rights to broadcast the game here. But, of course, they weren't as interested in showing me the opening night intros as they were in showing me Liam McHugh, Jeremy Roenick, and Keith Jones talking about other hockey games. So, they didn't want to show me the intros, but they also didn't want anyone else to. That's a dick-eating policy.

Of course, the centerpieces of the dick-eating dais have to be Gord Dwyer and Dave Jackson, the disastrous duo of referees who saw the Garden opener as their time to shine on the national stage, rather than the Canadiens' and Rangers'. The game was called terribly, and, as is so often the case with terrible officiating in the small sample size of one game, it heavily favored one team (the other guys, in this case). Most calls were bad, but none were as awful as the interference call on Kreider that cancelled out a Ranger power play in the 3rd. Courtesy of SB Nation, here's the play in convenient gif form:



According to Vigneault in a post-game interview, when he asked for an explanation, he was told that "if a player is skating backwards, the defenseman has to get out of his way, even if he was standing still." For the record, as if this needs to be clarified, the NHL Rulebook, section 56.1 ("Interference") clearly states: "A player is allowed the ice he is standing on
(body position) and is not required to move in order
to let an opponent proceed." In conclusion, these referees are bad at their jobs and subsequently liars, and should definitely eat a dick.

But it doesn't stop there! Granted, the Rangers aren't scoring much these days, and they're giving up plenty. And it's absurd to blame a couple of goal reviews for that. But, in the "insult to injury" category, the NHL Situation Room can eat a dick. Thursday night, in Philadelphia, J.T. Miller had a goal (as called on the ice) disallowed by the Situation Room on the grounds of a "distinct kicking motion." Tonight, Alex Galchenyuk had a goal upheld (as called on the ice). The phrase "eerily similar" has been used, and not inappropriately. Let's go to the video.

Here is Miller, whom multiple camera angles convinced the brain trust in the Situation Room "propelled the puck into the net with a distinct kicking motion":


And here is tonight's goal, on which multiple camera angles convinced the same brain trust that "the puck deflected off Alex Galchenyuk's right skate and into the net in a legal fashion":


No further analysis is necessary here; the Situation Room should eat a dick.

Speaking of the Rangers not scoring much these days, Brad Stuart should eat a dick. His headshot on Rick Nash 3 weeks ago cost himself a justified 3-game suspension, but cost Rick Nash who knows how long? The team remains totally silent about Nash's status, which is a very, very bad sign for its future. Speculation at this stage is dangerous and depressing, but one thing is clear as Lucite: Brad Stuart absolutely ought to eat a dick.

It's not right for me to write this long a frustrated post without getting angry at any Rangers, so let's remember that, as ever, Anton Stralman should eat a dick. Attention, everyone! I don't know why you like this guy so much! He! Is! Shitty! He's a defensive liability with an imaginary offensive upside! Seriously, some nights I feel like I'm watching a totally different guy than everyone else. Special bonus dick-eating sentence for the usually blameless Doc Emrick here, who called a play in which Stralman, from the point, passed the puck backwards to no one, leaving Marc Staal to make a diving play at the blue line to stop the puck from trickling out by inches. Doc described it as a "brilliant shuffleboard move" by Stralman. Dicks for everyone. To eat.

Also, Peter Budaj, who made a perfectly serviceable 27 saves tonight, should eat a dick, for being generally outplayed by a back-to-form King but nonetheless earning the shutout over him. I understand that all Budaj did to deserve this was his job as perfectly as he could have, but still.

Finally and even less fairly, because his production is so impossibly good so far, and I'm so very angry about unrelated things, blog favorite Sidney Crosby should eat a dick. In 12 games, Crosby has netted 8 goals and 12 assists. In 10 games, the whole Rangers team has only scored 15. In other words, Sidney Crosby is contributing to more goals per game than all the Rangers combined. If he stays healthy and on this (likely unsustainable) pace, Crosby will finish the season with 136 points, which would be the most in a single season since both Jagr and Lemieux broke 140 in 1995-'96.

Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicks.

The New York Wish Fulfillment Rangers, or Aaron Is Never Happy

So, you have no reason to believe this, but: I had planned to write a post today that, among other things, presented a case against eminently likable but ultimately inadequate backup goaltender Martin Biron. I was going to claim that a string of "bad outings" couldn't keep being seen as one-offs, supporting the argument with Biron's subterranean .899 save percentage dating back through 2010-2011. I was further going to (somewhat tenuously) argue that, as a backup goalie's primary job is to provide (mediocre) consistency, giving the team a chance to win every time he comes in even if he's never above average, the occasional stinker is to be tolerated less in a backup than in a starter. I was going to lament that Hedberg was never given a fair shake at camp, and that, given that Talbot needs to be playing instead of sitting, that left us with no option but Biron on the roster.

I was going to say all those things, and it was probably going to take me longer than that, but then today the Rangers put him, and Arron Asham, on waivers. So, I guess I don't have to convince anyone of anything. But, of course, this raises a pretty obvious question: Who goalie now? Vigneault isn't ruling anyone out, including Talbot and the Moose, but in the meanwhile, Biron will either be claimed on waivers or clear and be sent to Hartford. So, who goalie now? Do we believe that 40-year-old Hedberg, whose last NHL game was 6 months ago (he gave up 4 goals on 21 shots to the Rangers) will be more consistent, if he joins Callahan, Stepan, and Hagelin among the ranks of Rangers who didn't have the luxury of a training camp? Do we think that it's time for Talbot to start becoming familiar with backup life? Who goalie now??

Okay, and look. Fuck Arron Asham. Dude with that guy's history should make way for inexperienced kids, even if they're less talented, 10 times out of 10. I've said in this space many times that the Rangers would be easier to root for without him, and I'm excited about entering that reality. But. Since camp started, the guy has been better than plenty of other Ranger forwards. Hell, he has even won fights (something I couldn't say for him at all last season). If he was worth keeping around before, I can't imagine what has changed now. Am I really supposed to be excited instead about Derek Dorsett - he of the three unprovoked, unnecessary offensive-zone infractions Saturday night, of which two led to goals?

In conclusion, two things that I wanted to happen happened today, and I'm worried/unhappy about both. Thus, I have achieved what I believe to be the very essence of the Garden Faithful, and I am ready to transcend.

The rest of the planned post was to be an exciting numerical foray into just how bad the Rangers have been so far. That's the fun thing about such a small sample size: 5 games into an 82-game season, you can really combine the numbers to tell an atrocious tale. For example:

• The Rangers have amassed a goal differential of -16 in only 5 games. Not only is this obviously the league worst, it puts them on pace to be outscored by their opponents by 262.4 goals by the end of the regular season. This is only 2.6 short of the NHL record, set by the Washington Capitals, who were outscored by 265 in 1974-75.
• The Rangers have given up 25 goals in those 5 games, putting them on pace to give up 410 on the season, 36 shy of the record set by those same Capitals.
• The Rangers have, logically, then, scored only 9 goals so far. This puts them on pace to score 147.6, only 14.6 goals more than the NHL-low 1953-54 Chicago Black Hawks.
• 4 of the Rangers' goals were on the power play (2 on 5-on-3s), and one was that really bizarre shorthanded Jonathan Quick misplay over 100 feet from anyone else. Thus, the Rangers have only scored 4 even-strength goals: 3 by Brad Richards, one by Derek Dorsett.
• Ranger goalies have given up those 25 goals on 179 shots, for a combined save percentage of .860 through almost 300 minutes. .860.
• Marc Staal and Dan Girardi are already each -7. Ryan McDonagh is -5. Yes, plus/minus is dumb, but I don't have "on the ice for an even-strength goal," which is really only a little better anyway, and I don't know if you heard me but Staal, Girardi, and McDonagh are on pace to average under -100 each.
• The Rangers have been outshot in every game, obviously. But also, they have only even outshot their opponents in 4 individual periods (of 15), and 2 of those were the second and third of their shutout loss to the Ducks (can you say "score effects"?). The other two were the second period in LA and the second period in St. Louis.
• The Rangers have taken 135 shots on goal, bringing their shot differential to -44, an average per game of -8.8. The depressing part about that one? That's exactly what it was last season.

It's hard to be noticed at all among this kind of rubbish, but it's worth pointing out that, to date, Callahan is starting to look very good, Brad Richards looks almost worth the contract, and Stralman manages to stand out as a problem even on this blue line that is on pace to be nigh historically bad. Also, Derek Dorsett is, predictably, not exactly making up the difference between "Brassard, John Moore, and a 6th-rounder" and Marian Gaborik, is he? Yyyyyyyikes.

Look. Here's the thing. The Rangers are not this bad. At least, as you can see, it is statistically unlikely that they are this bad. We know this without even bothering to notice that the team shooting percentage (just as meaningless in a 5-game sample as the rest of these numbers) is as low as 6.67%. The team is bad for every reason, and it's fixing whatever it can. Lundqvist will get better. Biron will not. Callahan and Stepan, and eventually Hagelin, too, will return to regular season form. Everyone is learning a new system, and as they do, they'll stop focusing on it, and their ability to complete basic tape-to-tape passes is likely to return. Do those changes make the team likely to win the Cup, or even the division? No. But they make it better than this.

The point is: you shouldn't worry about any of that. The only thing from the last 5 games that you should worry about is the hit on Rick Nash. Nash is legitimately one of the best forwards in hockey. He is certainly the best on the Rangers. He's now retroactively on IR, out indefinitely, with concussion-y headaches. The Rangers had better take their time with this one, but who knows how long that will be, or if he'll ever come back the same? Best case, Nash returns soon and everything is fine. Worst case, he is, as my father fearfully suggested, "this generation's Eric Lindros" - and then, the Rangers are shitty this season, so Lundqvist signs elsewhere. Then, without Nash or Lundqvist, we can talk about how much this team really sucks. And we will.

EVERYONE CALM DOWN

Seriously you guys, Code Blue. This team doesn't know anything about each other yet. The coaching staff doesn't know anything about this team yet. You know what's pretty likely? You don't know anything about this team yet, either.



Look, the entire coaching staff (Benoit Allaire notwithstanding) was changed in the offseason (for those of you keeping score, the offseason was one game ago). Not a single forward line even resembles a line we had a few months ago. Brad Richards is a left wing now. Derek Stepan didn't go to any of training camp. Two of our top three scoring wingers from last season are currently out recovering from identical shoulder surgery. When Jesper Fast was born, Mark Messier was already a Ranger. This team hasn't exactly had time to gel, is what I'm saying.

Shouting about how "Vigneault's Power Play" is supposed to look better at this stage is just the bigger-scale version of shouting at the point man to shoot the puck a few seconds into an instance of it. I know you want them to score, but just chill out and let them get set up first! I am not a professional hockeyman, so I cannot be sure about this, but please allow me this supposition: it takes more than zero regular season games to learn a brand new system with a bunch of brand new guys well enough to use it to succeed at the highest professional level.

Breathe. This was supposed to happen. Trading Tortorella for Vigneault was likely a good move. Moving Richards to the wing was likely a good move. The Rangers will likely be a good squad this season. And it will all likely take some time. Meanwhile, even while we're losing, we're already more fun to watch. So, everything is okay, and everything is going to continue to be okay.