Everyone is terrible, John Tortorella is a sociopath, The End

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.

A toast to Arron Asham's injured groin

By my count, it had been 254 days since the New York Rangers had won a hockey game, and after the first two games of the season, it felt even longer. Sigh of relief cut somewhat short, the Blueshirts are right back in action tonight, against the Flyers. Herein lie some things that I feel like I need to say about Arron Asham, followed by some other scattered thoughts on the three games that led to the Rangers' 1-2 start so far.

Arron Asham will be out again tonight, due to the same groin injury that kept him out last night. And that is awesome. Asham is a big dumb douchebag, which is a position I do not have to justify here. But let's talk about the only thing he's done for us so far: his home-opening-faceoff choreographed fight with Tanner "I'd make a pun about his last name and 'Glass Jaw' except that he kicked Asham's ass in the fight" Glass.

First of all, this fight was orchestrated by Penguins head coach and noted hat-wearer Dan Bylsma, who chose to start the game by putting out his second line - and then replacing his right wing with Tanner Glass for some reason. (Take notes, Bob Smizik: the home team gets to pick its lineup after the away team.) John Tortorella (he of the much less classy neckties) followed suit and replaced his scoring line's winger with Arron "seriously, this guy is the worst" Asham, and so the Rangers' home opener started with a meaningless fight.

The lockout made me wait 4 extra goddamn months to watch hockey in Madison Square Garden, and then Arron Asham made me wait yet another 5 minutes.

Here's the thing: there was absolutely nothing on the line in this fight, other than Asham's and Glass's jobs. This was stupid. Blame was placed, sort of?, at least by the coach a little, on the Rangers not pulling the requisite spark from the fight, but that is a stupid idea.

You don't magically rally around a dude getting his face punched, whether he's Brandon Prust or Arron Asham. Prust's fights rallied the team because they happened when they fucking mattered at all. I think Scotty Hockey put it best: some good times to fight in an NHL game might be when you go down by 2 late in the first period on your home opener, or when your team comes out flat in the second regardless, or when deep in garbage time your skill rookie gets flattened at the blue line and doesn't get back up. Those are good examples of when you might want to fight in an NHL game, all of which fucking happened that night. Instead, Asham got his face punched by Tanner Glass for a minute or two before the hockey game started, and -- go figure! -- it didn't have much effect on the game!

Also: in losing Asham last night, we moved Bickel up to forward, and brought Eminger back in on defense. That means that the only things that changed were our fourth line and our bottom two D-pairs. I want to be explicit here. We went from:

Rupp - Halpern - Asham
Staal / Stralman
Bickel / Del Zotto

to:

Rupp - Halpern - Bickel
Staal / Del Zotto
Eminger / Stralman

Look at those two lineups. The one without Asham is just plain better! We keep Bickel in the lineup to be big for 4 minutes a game, and our defensive pairs get way more reliable (not in the least by moving Del Zotto up to where Staal can cover for him). Everything looks better without this guy!

So, here's to you, Arron Asham's groin. May you stay minorly injured for the next 17 months or so.

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In non-groin-related news, how excited am I about Rick Nash? Long-time regulars to this space (a chiefly fictional entity) will recall that I have been crushing on Nash for years. Along with a small handful of others (Dustin Byfuglien, Brooks Orpik), he's a guy I've dreamed of seeing in Broadway Blue for a long-ass time. But, like, for some reason, my dream came true on this one, and holy sweet Goddamn, he is so good at hockey, especially when he's on a real team. If this were a 3-game season, he'd undoubtedly be team MVP (and it would be a very disappointing season). Defensively responsible, strong on the puck... seriously, everything you want in a forward. Actually, the more I think about him, the more this news might be groin-related after all.

That was an erection joke.

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After a win in which Gaborik, Richards, Stepan, Callahan, and Nash averaged 21:28 of ice time each, and no other forward touched 15:30, Coach Tortorella doubled down on his one-line-to-rule-them-all strategy, explaining: "Quite honestly, I'm not comfortable playing a four-line rotation. I don't think guys have played well enough for me to play a four-line rotation comfortably, because we need to win."

And the worst part is: he's right. Hell, I'm not even comfortable rolling three. Beyond the big three marquee names (who have at least pulled their weight and at most been Rick Nash), there hasn't been much from anyone. We all expected Kreider's play to take a significant dive (or, if you didn't, you damn well should have). But all the other second-and-third-liners really need to step up. I understand that Dubinsky and Anisimov are gone (for good reason), and Prust and Fedotenko are gone (possibly for less good reason), but this team still has Ryan Callahan, Brian Boyle, Carl Hagelin, and Derek Stepan, all of whom need to get rolling.

But there's reason to believe they will. This season started after 5 days of camp with no pre-season. The style the Rangers play -- gritty, in-your-face, shot-blocking, defensive -- takes a longer time to get rolling. That's why we've seen so many scores like 5 and 6 already. As the season starts to settle in, expect overall scores to drop some - and with that, expect the Rangers' defense and middle-liners to get back into their groove. And, by the way, that will include Taylor Pyatt, whom you should start preparing to like, if you don't already. Remember that.

Frankly, it can't come soon enough, otherwise, under Torts, those top three guys are gonna get real tired.

It's shit like this

Holy shit how do you not suspend Shea Weber holy shit you guys seriously?

Did you not see this? Why have you not seen this? Go look at this.



My favorite angle is shown from about 0:43 to about 0:52 in that video. I'll wait. Watch it as many times as you like.

Sufficiently angry? Good. Here's the thing: not suspended at all. This is a league with humongous-big concussion problems! Even that one-and-only-hockey-player-we're-supposed-to-care-about had one for a while, you may have heard about it? Here's a great way to not reduce head injuries: allow players to just slam each other's heads into the boards like it ain't no thang. It is a thang, NHL. It is very much a thang. This is brutal, intentional, and has potential to cause serious head injury! This is a fucking no-brainer! Shanny, what say you?

"We reached out to Detroit following the game and were informed that Zetterberg did not suffer an apparent injury and should be in the lineup for Game 2. This play and the fine that addressed it will be significant factors in assessing any incidents involving Shea Weber throughout the remainder of the playoffs."

Right. 'Cause. You know. Weber did his best to slam Zetterberg's head into the boards in such a way that it wouldn't give him a concussion. You can clearly tell from the video: he angles his hand in such a way that the smash will only cause immediate pain, and definitely not any lasting damage. Obviously. Plus, we know for sure that Zetterberg is fine, because concussions always reveal themselves fully immediately following hits. Can't think of any famous concussion cases in recent NHL history, wherein a team didn't figure out its star player was concussed until a game or two later, right?

Look: Brendan Shanahan's job is hard. You can't always tell, analyzing the video of a play, whether something was malicious or incidental, and degree of injury doesn't always correspond to intent. These things are inherently subtle and subjective. But occasionally, you are handed a gift. Every once in a while, you get to see a video in which someone very obviously and intentionally picks up a dude's head and slams it hard into some plexiglass. Those are the days that you should rejoice that you finally got an easy one to get right.

We all recall that John Tortorella got fined $20,000 last week for calling the Penguins arrogant, right? (Yes, I know that Bettman said it was because Tortorella cursed in the presser. I'm far too lazy to go collect countless clips of coaches cursing in pressers, which they do all the time, without penalty. Everyone, including Torts, understands exactly why he was really fined.) I'm not here to complain about that fine, I'm here to present a basis of comparison.

The CBA states that the maximum player fine for an incident is $2500, and that's exactly what the NHL fined Weber today. Last week's post-game presser cost John Tortorella $20,000. I know the NHL can't do anything about the maximum player fine, but it could easily have found its nutsack and suspended Weber, if it wanted to make any kind of statement about player safety. Without a suspension, you're left with this incident looking, to the casual observer, ten times more acceptable than a head coach badmouthing another team. Why would the NHL want to send that kind of message?

I can't believe we have to do this again

Okay, look. I'm getting sick of explaining that Sean Avery is a valuable hockey player. But it seems to be necessary again, in light of his replacement by Erik Christensen over the last two games, including Tuesday night's absolute sleeper against Avery's former team (against whom he generally plays very well). So here we are again, using math where common sense seems to have failed. If anyone has John Tortorella's email address, do me a favor and send him this stuff. I hear he's coaching the Rangers these days, and this information could probably help him out. Also, find out if he's hiring?

Game One: Washington Leads 1-0

So, it's kinda hard to get too angry about last night's game. We came into the home of a team that is much better at hockey than we are, missing our best forward. The home team had absolutely everything to prove against us, and at home in Game One against an 8-seed. We played our game as well as we could, the officials stayed the hell out of the way, and we completely held our own. After an almost 80-minute battle, they eventually broke through and scored the tiebreaker. You want it to go the other way, but you can't be super-angry about it.

Yes, the Caps outplayed us for large portions of the game, increasing as time went on. But all that time of possession they had didn't really translate into all that many fantastic scoring chances, and when it did, our defensemen or goalie generally came up big. Guess what, guys: that's how it's gonna go. That's how we're gonna win these games, if we win them. Last night, it's how we lost one. But we still played the only type of game we're gonna win against these guys. If you're asking why Marian Gaborik didn't score 4 goals, and why we didn't beat them 8-1, then you're asking the wrong questions.

Here's an interesting line of questions, though. Did we, over time in overtime, start to look more and more tired, and did that eventually contribute to our giving up the game-winner at the end of the first OT?

I want to give credit where credit is due, here, first: I'm a huge supporter of coach John Tortorella, I think he's done a fantastic job rebuilding this team in the right way since he's taken the helm, and I imagine he may be under consideration for this year's Jack Adams Award. I also largely agree with a point he made in an interview the other day, that the media generally gives coaches too much shit when a team plays badly and too much credit when a team plays well. In the NHL, as they say, many coaches are "hired to be fired."

Now, with that said, there are some things that the coaches do control, and that they should rightly be held accountable for. Let's make a bold assumption, that the Rangers' fate could have been different last night if they hadn't been so damn exhausted by the end of the OT period. One could certainly argue that fatigue was not a factor last night, but I think it was. I think that regularly good Rangers just didn't have it in them anymore, and throughout the OT, Caps' possession time kept on increasing, until it was hard not to see the game-winner coming.

If that was the problem, we have to ask why. The Caps had played exactly as long a game as the Rangers had, why didn't they get as tired? One possible explanation is conditioning, but I don't buy it. Players have often identified Torts's training regimen, starting at training camp, as the hardest they've experienced in the pros. Alex Ovechkin aside, I find it highly unlikely that the Capitals are just more in-shape than the Rangers.

Outside of this run-on sentence, I will spare you my opinions (which you already know) on how I think a guy like Sean Avery (a healthy scratch yet again) might have been a difference-maker in a physical, 80-minute hockey game that the Rangers got too fatigued to win, as opposed to Mats Zuccarello's seven minutes and thirty-four seconds of forgettable ice time; but it's worth noting that that healthy scratches are a coaching decision.

The most obvious thing to blame here is Torts's propensity to lean on his top guys inordinately. Understand: he's absolutely right about who those top guys are. It's very hard to argue with the theory that, in an overtime period in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I'd rather have Marc Staal on the ice than Matt Gilroy; I'd rather Brandon Dubinsky than Erik Christensen. But that doesn't mean you can lean exclusively on those guys you'd prefer, all game long, every game. That starts to take its toll, especially in, as Joe Beninati called them last night, "grownup overtimes."

Last night, John Erskine got the least ice time of all Caps defensemen, with 18:44. After that, the Washington D's ice time ranged from 23:42 to 28:39. Meanwhile, even if you throw out outlier Matt Gilroy (who got 16:22, almost two-and-a-half minutes less than Erskine), the Rangers' D ranged from 20:08 to 33:14.

In fact, if you don't include John Erskine, the average Capital defenseman deviated from the average defensive ice time of his team by only 1:53. Even including Erskine, that figure is only 2:39. Meanwhile, even without Gilroy, the average Ranger defenseman deviated from his team's average defensive ice time by 4:14. Including Gilroy, by 5:08.

Which of these teams is the one that wins "by committee," again?

Look, even in a game like last night's, you obviously want to give more ice time to your better guys. I'm not suggesting McCabe's 20:08 should have been as high as Staal's 33:14. Staal is great at stopping other people from scoring goals, so you want him to spend as much time as possible doing that. But maybe a little more balance among the ranks would have led to a little less fatigue down the stretch, and maybe that would have helped.

Or maybe not. Maybe if we'd played McCabe and Gilroy a little more last night, we would have given up the tie-breaker even sooner, because one of them would have done something stupid. It's just something to think about. Anyway, buckle in - if last night's game was any indication, the Rangers are here to play this series for real, and we can expect some more hockey games that look a lot like Game One did. Tomorrow night, we have the chance to even the series and win back home ice. One game at a time; Let's Go Rangers!

Torts Good and Bad (and whom to root for tonight)

I really don't wanna dive too deeply into this Zdeno Chara/Max Pacioretty stuff. My take is this: it is super-unfortunate. I've seen the hit, which I won't link to here, and it looked totally clean to me. I think labeling it with intent to injure is silly, and I think this news about Montréal police starting an investigation is kinda nonsense. That said, the injury that transpired was horrific, and could easily have been even worse. Everyone's outrage is understandable.

I'm not going to make a statement like "this is the NHL's fault." That's too black-and-white. And I support their decision to not suspend Chara further. However, in general, the focus on supplementary discipline is exactly the problem here. The "New NHL" has made a slight grab around the shoulder or stick tap anywhere on the body an automatic two minutes. In the ideal world of the New NHL, how was Chara supposed to take Pacioretty down? He had the jump on him, and surely, as a defenseman, Chara's job is not to watch Pacioretty skate on by. So, what: hit him softly and see what happens? In 1990, I think Chara sticks an arm out to slow him down a little. But no: the New NHL says that's illegal. So Chara has no choice but to throw his whole (gigantic) body at the guy. And it happens to be in an unfortunate location on the ice (where the New NHL's new boards have a lot less give than they did in the 90s, by the way).

Anyway, I started by saying I didn't really want to get into that. It sickens me, and I think it's another example of how the NHL actively makes decisions that end up making the sport more dangerous. I only bring it up because Torts made some comments on the subject that it's worth reading. He talks about the players "not [being] allowed to police themselves," and I think that's exactly the right way to put it. How many times in the last few seasons have you seen officials break up a fight before it happens? What about assigning an instigator penalty (which is now an automatic 17 minutes, by the way) to the guy who cleanly challenges an opponent who did something nasty to a teammate, while letting "choreographed, pre-arranged" fights (there's a stoppage of play, the coaches line up their "fighters" next to each other, the announcers say "oh boy, I think I know what's coming," and they're off) get off with 5 minutes each? Like that's the good kind of fight?

Now, think hard. When you see officials break up a fight before it happens, or when you see one of these nonsense instigator penalties, do they tend to clean up the game? Does it inspire players to cool down? Or does it make them more agitated, because they didn't have the opportunity to settle things like real men, like hockey players do? Does it maybe cause the game to get more out of hand? (YES, IT DOES.)

The point is: cheers to John Tortorella for calling that out to the media. May more coaches and GMs start to say shit like this, and may the Bettman/Campbell bonehead bifecta ever start to listen to the people who actually know hockey (or, like, retire?).

And, as the post title implies, jeers to Tortorella as well, for the usual: shafting Sean Avery. On a night when absolutely no Ranger forward was good, and when the Wolski-Stepan-Zuccarello line was particularly atrocious, Torts defaulted to his old standby and responded by benching Sean Avery. Avery, who looked no worse than anyone else (Dubinsky and Callahan notwithstanding), and who looked better than many, got a team-low (what else is new?) 8:28, including only 2:01 in the third. This 8:28 was a full 1:50 behind the next-lowest, perennial non-factor Ruslan Fedotenko. For comparison, Wolski, Stepan, and Zuccarello got 12:32, 14:34, and 15:05, respectively, while Avery's "linemates" got 14:36 (Prospal) and 14:48 (Gaborik, who scored despite being unimpressive).

Worse, all signs point to Avery being scratched Saturday night in San Jose, in favor of Erik Christensen. I won't go on another rant here about Avery and Christensen, because it will look like a dozen other posts this season. In short: fuck Erik Christensen, and fuck that move.

Anyway, standings. The Flyers did us a favor and beat the Leafs in regulation last night, but the Bruins gave up a 3-2 lead in the third (with some help from the officials) and lost to Buffalo in overtime. Which puts Buffalo at 74 points, tied with us, with two games-in-hand. Someone needs to start beating these guys, please. As for tonight, we've got the 'Canes in Washington, where Alex Ovechkin really needs to stay hot and win a game in regulation for us. If Carolina wins, the standings become a little more honest, and we officially drop to 9th. We've also got Atlanta at New Jersey. Go Thrash, because if the Devils can lose another game or two, this goddamn "miracle run" talk will end, and we can all go back to laughing at Ilya Kovalchuk a little bit.

I never know how to end blog posts.

Top Five Things I Like Today

5. When I woke up yesterday morning, my girlfriend said to me, "sorry about the shootout [from the previous night]." My reaction was, "meh, we played a good game, so did they, it ended in a tie. Then we played the weird skills competition game and they earned themselves a free Bettman Point. Teams do that all the time - we've got five Bettman Points so far on the season ourselves. Whatever. Why should a 7-round shootout affect how I feel about a hockey game?" She then revealed to me that her father, who attended the game, heroically Walked The Fuck Out after overtime, and did not stick around for the shootout. Awesome.

Those aren't the #5 Thing I Like Today, they're the lead-up. The Thing in question is that we have a coach who basically feels the same way, and is willing to say it. Asked about why we went first instead of our usual second, Torts explained that we'd be going back in the future: "[Lundqvist] talked to me, he feels more comfortable making the first save. It's kind of his show in that silly skills competition we do, so... I have to listen to him."

Silly skills competition, indeed.

4. I know it's a Penguin doing it, but still: this.



3. The title of this video on YouTube is not the point. I watched it without sound. The point is just two guys, chilling and watching a basketball game.



2. Torts again! Comes out and says "I agree that Staal shouldn't be suspended, he sucker-punched a guy but it wasn't a huge deal, it wasn't dirty, intent-to-injure-type stuff" (I paraphrase here, of course). Then calls the league to ask why no one penalized Orpik for shouldering Avery in the head - not saying it was dirty, just that it really should have been penalized. The obvious implication: "you would have called a penalty if this were anyone but Avery, and if the situation were reversed, it would have been a suspension." Here's Brooks's take.

1. The long-awaited return of Vinny Prospal to the lineup tonight. That is so fucking cool. I hope he's good again. Also, despite his return, Staal will keep the A, which is bonus-awesome. Clearly, Newbury sits. Looks like the first line will be Prospal-Stepan-Gaborik? That's a pretty good line. I'd bitch a little about that obviously meaning Avery will end up on the fourth with Drury, except as we learned 2 nights ago, they're more guidelines than they are lines, and everyone will skate with everyone else.

Bonus: Fuck you, fatty! Spend the second half of April fucking your sister-in-law or whatever, you won't be playing hockey!

30 is a Good Number

Hell, yes.

Some of you may have heard about the Vancouver Canucks, the team with the best record in hockey right now, and how they came into the Garden last night having not lost a single game in regulation in their previous 17 games, (their last regulation loss being 3-2 to the Blues on December 5). You may have heard of a pair of identical talents named Henrik and Daniel Sedin. You probably heard a lot about how this game was going to be a big test for the Rangers.

Well, Coach Tortorella (who gets big points from me when he says shit like this) rejected that idea, saying "Obviously, they're one of the better teams in the league. But I think we're a good team, too. I don't like the idea of measuring sticks... We're going to play them head-on and see where we land, just like we do with other teams." However, he did give some deference to Vancouver's second-most-goals-in-the-league offense, saying "We're going to need some goals tonight. We're not going to win a hockey game 1-0. We won't."

Not that I begrudge Torts the sentiment. We could really use some more goals lately. Going into last night's game, the Rangers had scored 8 goals in 6 games in 2011, the Canucks 20 in as many. "Scoring by committee" is supposed to mean many different scorers, not that the committee nominates one guy to score on any given night, but their selection varies.

Anyway, by now you know how this story ends. 1-0 in regulation is exactly how we won last night, dealing the Canucks not only their first regulation loss since December 5 but their first shutout since Carey Price blanked them back on November 9. The shutout was Lundqvist's 6th of the season, tying him with Tim Thomas for the league lead, and the 30th of his regular season career, tying him with John Ross Roach for third on the all-time Rangers list, 10 behind Dave Kerr and 19 behind Eddie Giacomin. And oh man did he ever earn it, and the NHL's #1 star of the day, with some of the unbelievable saves he made last night. Of the shutout, Hank said "30 is a good number. Hopefully I can keep it going a little bit longer." Yeah.

Tortorella opened his post-game press conference saying to the reporters, "You guys are going to make me eat my words, aren't you? I was praying they'd tie it up and we'd win it 2-1 in OT." Once again, shit like this makes me love the guy.

But if I can get all whiny for a minute, you know what makes me not love the guy? Him not understanding that Sean Avery is good at hockey. Avery once again came out of the gate playing really well and was once again relegated to insignificant ice time: this time, he got only 6:48, including only one 40-second shift in the entire third period. This put him 1:46 ahead of Dale Weise and 5:43 behind any other forward. I understand that Torts decided that the Fedotenko-Boyle-Prust line (which was fantastic) needed to be on the ice for the entire third period, but how does Sean Avery not break 7 minutes playing like he does in a game like this? What is going on?

And when I mention Avery, bad officiating is never far behind. I'd like to talk about the really bad non-interference call on Avery, when he broke into the zone in the first period, passed the puck away, and then got sandwiched between two Canucks in what could have been used as a video to explain the interference penalty. But unfortunately, it pales in comparison to the bullshit that Alex Burrows pulled in front of Lundqvist near the end of the second. Burrows put his stick right between Staal's legs, pulled, up, and gave him a 24th birthday present of a spear to the nuts. From the ice, Staal slashed at Burrows's ankles, and, as you might expect, Staal got the only penalty - a minor for slashing.

The only good think that came out of this was Tortorella's post-game quote about it: "It's ridiculous. It's dangerous. The thing that bothers me is: how don't you see it? And that's what was told to me. That's what agitated me - they didn't see it. Then Sean Avery chips a puck in, and it's interference. That's a dangerous play on Marc Staal, and it's beyond me how two guys - one in the corner and one out in the neutral zone - can't see it. And we end up down, which usually happens if you retaliate, but if I'm Marc Staal, I'd retaliate, too. I'd try to break his ankle, on something like that. It's ridiculous." It's nice to see the coach stand up for taking a penalty like that, and to stand up for Avery in the same breath.

Anyway, the ensuing penalty was compounded by a delay of game call for putting the puck over the boards, giving the Canucks a 47-second 5-on-3. By the end of the kill, as Sam Rosen says, "they [were] on their feet at the Garden." This was one of two things the Garden Faithful did that worthy of my remark. The other was when some Canucks fans brought out a Canadian flag, and the entire crowd started chanting, "USA! USA!" I liked it a lot. However, unlike usual, I do kinda have to concede to Scotty Hockey's no-fun point this time, that the Canucks' best all-around player is American and our best is a Swede.

Anyway, this was a great, complete hockey game. Special tips of the "good job" hat go to Matt Gilroy and Brian Boyle. In a game where everyone played very well, especially the 20-minute Fedotenko-Prust-Boyle line, you still noticed these two standing out. Boyle especially gave the game of his life. This team is now 18-0-0 in games in which we lead going into the third, which I think is a much more important statistic than that ridiculous "record in 1-goal games" crap. That's a ridiculous crap-statistic. A crap-tistic. The end of this post is now.

Two Mediocre Teams Split Home-and-Home

...and no one was surprised. With this season's disappointment in Frolov, and the total lack of Drury and Prospal, it's no surprise that this team is just okay. The Rangers are looking at a king's ransom of second- and third- liners: Christensen, Avery, Dubinsky, Callahan, Anisimov, Boyle, Prust, and Fedotenko. If we call Gaborik a definite first-liner and Boogaard a definite fourth-liner, that leaves us with Frolov, Stepan, and Todd Freakin' White to fill in the gaps. This is not the world's most elite collection of parts. So, no one should be surprised that we're a middle-of-the-pack team.

Last night was once again the kind of win which people call "sloppy," "unlikely," "grinding," and "far from perfect." No surprises. We responded very quickly each time Ottawa took the lead (1:46 the first time, 1:09 the second time) until entering the third period down 3-2 and scoring 3 goals in the final period to win 5-3. The Rangers once again battled back and grinded out a win. This is all starting to sound familiar.

Which is not really a reason to despair. We have these parts, and we're using them to pretty good effect. Make no mistake: this season's middle-of-the-pack squad is a lot more fun to watch and a lot easier to have faith in than last season's. I don't know why, but I feel like, when we lose, it's not usually because we should have won and got lazy. So, things are looking up? Plus, at least we're not the Devils or the Islanders.

With that said, I am having some trouble wrapping my head around Coach Tortorella's "Lines? Lines?!? We don't need no stinkin' lines!!" policy. I'm all for a policy of line rotation, but having a bunch of second- and third-liners is no excuse to just assemble them differently every 3 days. There's a balance to be struck between giving everyone a shot to perform and giving lines a chance to gel and find some chemistry. I sometimes wonder if Torts believes in the latter at all.

A few nights ago, when preparing to play the Ottawa Senators, Erik Christensen and Sean Avery were the best forwards available to sit on the top line with superstar Marian Gaborik. Meanwhile, Artem Anisimov was punished onto the fourth line with a slumping Alex Frolov, and Derek Stepan took his place keying Dubi and Cally, leaving Ruslan Fedotenko to play with Boyle and Prust.

Last night, zero injuries or forward substitutions later, when preparing to play the Ottawa Senators, Erik Christensen and Sean Avery were the bottom-ranked forwards available, placed on the 4th line with big punchin'-guy Derek Boogaard. Meanwhile, Stepan and Fedotenko were the best forwards available to sit on the top line with superstar Marian Gaborik, which left room for Anisimov to come back from his punishment and key Dubi and Cally, leaving a slumping Frolov to play with Boyle and Prust.

That, to me, is not a little bit of rotation to shake things up. That, to me, is some epic shifting. Though this be madness, I've been trying to find some method in't. One theory I've come up with is that because Torts has absolutely no idea what he is supposed to do with this Boogaard fellow (whose shoulder, not his broken nose, kept him out after last night's fight with blood-flicker Matt Carkner), so he tends to use Boogaard's fourth-line wing spot as a place to double-shift Gaborik. Did you notice that the left-handed Boogaard, who played left wing his entire pre-Ranger career, is now suddenly a right wing? Yeah, well this would explain that. It would also explain why the same pair of linemates that belonged on the first line against the Senators Sunday belong on the fourth line against the Senators Thursday. I seriously think this explains some things, strange/sad as it is.

That said, it doesn't explain everything. There's still a crazy amount of line-shifting going on, including (by the stopped-clock principle) the line I've been begging to see for a while now, Avery-Boyle-Prust at practice on Tuesday morning. I just wonder if, now that it's December, it might make sense to just stick some lines together and let them gel for a bit? It seems like Torts would rather just keep developing individuals and not line units, and I wonder if that's not gonna hurt us in the long run.

Nutting up (with the alternative, shutting up, being undesirable to me), what would I do? Assuming we can't have Drury or Prospal back any time soon, I would probably use last night's lines, with a slight modification, and see what sticks. I'd like to see Dubinsky-Anisimov-Callahan and Avery-Boyle-Prust as the two core lines. Most of the time, I'd like to see them together. I'd also give Stepan a meaningful chance to pivot Gaborik - they've both got talent, but neither has found long-term chemistry with anyone, which at least Gaborik has mentioned. If we keep calling Stepan the team's "most creative playmaking center," which we do, let's let these two guys stay together.

That leaves Fedotenko, Christensen, Frolov, and White dangling (assuming Boogaard belongs on the fourth line). I'd alternate Fedotenko and Frolov as first line/fourth line winger, which gives them each incentive to outplay the other. Fedotenko's been good but not great no matter where we put him, and I'd like to see what he can do consistently with Stepan and Gaborik. That first line left wing spot has been Frolov's to lose, and he's done a good job of losing it so far. This is his opportunity to earn it back, and if he doesn't, he's done here anyway. Maybe Fedo picks up his game a lot. And if neither works out, what a good place for Prospal to return. Christensen clearly deserves a roster spot more than White right now, but maybe let them battle each other a little, too. Again, if neither works out, Drury comes back.

So, there. That's what I would do. But they never ask me. And, to be honest, it's hard to totally argue with what appears to be modest success. Yeah, we haven't played amazing teams lately, and all our wins seem to be chippy and hang by a thread, and we're only two points into the playoffs. But let's be honest: with two of our better forwards out (all season so far, no less) - with the cast of second- and third-liners listed above - we've won 3 of our last 4, 5 of our last 7, 7 of our last 10, and 10 of our last 15, dating back a month. Also that's a really nice pattern of triangular numbers.

So, we may not have a Sidney Crosby scoring 80 bagrillion goals a week, but we're not doing so badly for ourselves, either. And, as I said earlier, at least we're not the Devils or the Islanders. This weekend, we're in Columbus Saturday night, then back home against the Capitals Sunday night. This season, in games played the night after we played another game, we're 7-0. Think that streak can continue against Ovechkin and friends?