A little past the quarter pole and the landscape of the Atlantic Division has changed drastically. Suddenly, the division is wide open and the Penguins and Devils are well within the Rangers rear-view mirror. CAUTION: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. If you blinked you missed it quicker than a Rangers Man Advantage.
The Broadway Blueshirts are 4-5-1 in their last ten games, the worst ten game stretch of any team in the Atlantic Division. They've dropped the last two contests to Vancouver and Ottawa and have proven that they can't finish teams off in regulation. Should I harp on the Power Play again, or go over Tom Renny's line match-up mishaps? Sometimes teams need to prove that they can go through prolonged stretches of offensive woes and defensive let downs, but the Rangers are beating themselves.
It starts with the mismatched lines produced by Renny and trickles down to the defenseman, namely Rozival and Redden, whose game has declined since the puck dropped in Prague. Both have played uninspired hockey devoid of any physical play (the only thing Redden has hit is Gomez when he injured his ankle). Neither can pick up odd man rushes and slow the puck through the neutral zone and neither has any clue about the Power Play, not only can't they drive the puck to the net but they can't stop penalty killers from driving the puck on Lundqvist. My father says the same thing constantly, and I've come to agree whole heatedly, the Rangers should decline their penalties. They are the only team in history that is at a disadvantage when up one man. Keep this in mind: The Rangers are 16% on the Power Play, at the bottom of the league and they give up shorthanded goals 7% of the time. Hockey math suggests that if you add those numbers together and divide by poor team chemistry from lines 1 through 4 you arrive at a 0% chance of making a playoff run. With guys like Mara, Girrardi and Staal, does it strike anyone else as strange that we continue to let Rozival and Redden dominate our blue line?
Next, where are the goals supposed to come from? Where is our go-to goal scorer? Is it second year man Brandon Dubinsky, is it Captain Chris Drury or super skill phenom Nikolai Zherdev. It is time for Gomez to start earning his $50m and distributing the puck to whatever mess Renny places him with when he returns to the ice tonight against the lowly Phoenix Coyotes.
If it were up to me, which it obviously isn't but hey, I can daydream - I would pair the speed of Gomez with Brandon Dubinsky and Marcus Naslund and the one man wrecking crew Nikolai Zherdev with the right place, right time Capt. Chris Drury. The third man on this line would fall into place depending on who Voros and Callahan appeared to play better with. The latter two players are great "glue guys," players that will work hard on a shift to create chances for the skilled forwards that the Rangers have in abundance. I would also call Glen Sather and ask the same question Larry Brooks of the New York Post has asked on more than one occasion, why are we paying guys like Petr Prucha and Patrick Rissmiller millions of dollars so that we can scratch them on a nightly basis? Clear the money already and leave the team some wiggle room to shake things up come February if things are still not coming together.
Lastly, think back to my first concern, the very first point I expressed when launching this blog. Remember what it was? All I will say is that somewhere in Siberia there is a forward skating big minutes tallying 15 goals and 18 assists through 30 games...... See if you find those numbers on the Ranger roster.
Let's see how things go against Gretzky's boys tonight at the Garden - Hopefully it's all just a funk that Gomez can help skate us out of.
Go Rangers.
Keywords: Drury, Gomez, Larry Brooks, New York Rangers, NHL, Redden, Renny, Staal
