Five Things on the Rangers/Sabres Game. . .

* It's never a good thing when you feel like you are just doing the same thing over and over again is it? Well, I'm writing the same things. The Rangers are doing the same things. We're all thinking the same things. Not good. Not good at all.

* The set-up on that powerplay (wait did someone say powerplay?) goal by Ryan Callahan looked brilliant. Fantastic to see but all the more annoying because they can do it. They can. Despite their recent blechy-ness on the PP, the Rangers still hold a pretty impressive stat with the extra man on home ice.

* Loved the initial energy and movement of the line of Higgins, Prospal, and Gaborik. Even though PJ Stock thinks that Higgins is better as a complementary checker than a goal scorer...I don't really mind him playing with these boys as long as he keeps up, and shoots the puck. He doesn't have to be the flashy guy, but since his two goal outburst on the West Coast trip, Higgins has seemed a more confident player. And the Rangers need a lot of things surely, but someone with confidence is nice.

* Did my eyes mistake me or did Derek Roy help up Dan Girardi after the tumble in the far boards? I always like to see sportsmanship. And I always thought Derek Roy was a good guy.

* Since we don't want to keep saying the same things over and over, let's talk instead about Ryan Miller. I was suprised to see him give up two goals so quickly (let alone all game) because he's just been so lights as of late. While that's good things for Buffalo, surely, it's very good news for Team USA for him to be having such great numbers.


What will the Rangers do tomorrow? Will it be a different story here? I'm not sure. The Buffalo game at least kept my interest. Actually the last four games (1-3) have been better to watch than the previous handful.

I just wish they'd win a couple in a row - for themselves, for us as fans, for everyone. To prove they can may help build what I'm sure is a pretty low confidence at this point.

Five Things on the Rangers/Sabres Game. . .

* Due to technical difficulties with the satellite (ie: snow), I was not able to watch the first half of the game in its entirety (although Rangers fans kick butt for being so great as to send links to watch online! Thank you!). From what I did see though, that was a complete team effort. Supporting each other. Grinding. Moving. Skating. Passing. Pretty much doing what needed to be done to win. And they did.

* How important was it that Callahan and Higgins scored? These are two guys that many Rangers fans - and me too - expected to be able to pot around 20 goals easily this year. Easily has not been the case and even though there is plenty of the season to go, the Rangers have not scored in such a manner that would make me think that original assumption is still possible. BUT - if these guys can start to contribute more in any degree on the score sheet, the Rangers will benefit from it.

* Hank looked to have one of his more solid games than in the past handful. Honestly, I love the Rangers - I do! - but I did not think the Rangers stood much of a chance going into Buffalo on a Saturday night to play the red-hot Ryan Miller. I was proven wrong. Yes, the Rangers needed two goals to do it, but Hank kept them in the game with some nice saves.

* As much as the win was important, I think the way in which they played was more so. They need to play on the same page. They need to play as a team. And they need to do the little things. They are not "good enough" to just skate through the motions. They need to work and they need to work for a full 60 minutes. Last night was a good example of it, but sadly we've seen much to little of those games from them this year.

* With his assist on the Higgins goal, Marian Gaborik has scored points in 23 of his 26 games as a Ranger. Seriously? The guy is simply unreal.

That is all. Rangers quick turnaround to play Detroit at home in just under 5 hours. Enjoy the game everyone!

Rangers/Sabres Wrap, My Steven McDonald Vote, and Around the League. . .

To start, a quick wrap of last night's affair at the Garden.

I felt, and many would agree, it was a must win game for Buffalo. They couldn't afford to fall too far in the standings, especially with how close everything has been. Only the top teams have assurance of making the playoffs. For everyone else, it's another season of claw and grab.

The Rangers didn't let that happen. With their fourth win in a row at MSG, they hit a season high. They came on strong to start, and despite owning a 4-1 lead at one point, made it interesting towards the end. But, good teams, they say, find a way to win in the end.

Since the Rangers started scoring four goals or more (7 out of the last 11 games), their win totals have gone up, not at all surprisingly. It is still, weeks into Tortorella's regime, surprising me to see what a completely different team we have been blessed with.

It's amazing what a system - the right system - can do.

Hank has not been perfect, at times far from it, but in the new system he hasn't had to be. I see the visible relief on his face.

Gomez's game has improved and his gaffs that used to be a constant, are now much more infrequent.

Antropov has done nothing but impress me. I am not sure if it's a release from being in a new city, but this guy has, so far, done everything and more in his short tenure with the Rangers. A big guy that was very much needed. It's amazing. Add one guy that's 6'6" and the rest of the team doesn't look so small anymore.

Or perhaps that's just because they are no longer playing like it.

Drury was finally able to score a goal against his former team, and now leads the Rangers with 9 powerplay goals.

Staal, who impressed me from day one of the season and had less than a handful of off games this year, is looking like a marvel. I got such insane pleasure out of watching him join the rush last night. It made me think that it was possible for the Rangers to have a real honest to goodness two-way defenseman again. A guy who was superb in his own end, but who could contribute offensively. If early indications are correct, he can be that guy.

The team is fun to watch again. No, they are not perfect, and there are still going to be major problems - both financially and on ice - in the months and seasons to come. But it felt great going into this weekend to be so excited for not one, but two, games at the Garden.

Thanks for giving us our team back, for the time being at least.



My Extra Effort Award Winner:

Ryan Callahan.

Not for the two goals last night, on his 24th birthday. Not at all.

But for the fact that he is one of perhaps only three - three - players on this team to have played the game with the same exact attitude and energy - the right attitude and the right energy - since game one this season. If this guy took a night off, I didn't see it. Whether he scored goals - and he now has 19 on the season, up over 10 from his career high - or made plays, he was always in the game. He was the first person to set the tone with a big hit. He'd scrap with someone if necessary.

His linemates may have been switched around constantly, and he may have played on every line this season, but his attitude and work ethic never wavered. He is a great team guy and someone I always noticed and respected on this team.

Why him? Why Extra Effort?

I'm still, and I alluded to this before, holding true to the true meaning of Extra Effort in my mind. The guy that went ABOVE AND BEYOND the call of duty.

To me, the highest paid, or the best players, should be the best players. You expect that from them. That is a given. Granted the two have not been connected very much this year on the Rangers - the best and the highest paid - but let's not go there.

My point is, I don't look at the Extra Effort Award winner as a Team MVP award. I don't think that was the original intention. People are allowed to vote for whomever they want, and they should, but I personally don't see it that way.

I think of it as an award for the guy that does what is NOT expected of him. The guy that steps up and does good for the team in all capacities. Sticking up for teammates. Creating energy and enthusiasm from the fans. And being a good and responsible player.

He doesn't have to be your leading goal scorer. In fact, he probably shouldn't be. He's just the guy taking everything he has and making you take notice.

That's why guys like Adam Graves, Sandy McCarthy, and Jed Ortmeyer won the award. They did more than what was expected from them. They were guys giving extra, and giving it all the time.

Ryan Callahan is very much in that same mold. He's a really solid hockey player and has come up with career totals this year, but no one expected him to be that guy. The goals - those are nice, but those are a bonus. No one is asking Ryan Callahan to score 19 goals.

That happened as a result of his never say no attitude for going to the net, going to the corners, being in the right spot, and playing with his head up.

The Rangers have a few more guys as of late that are playing with energy and enthusiams, joy for a game we all love. But Ryan Callahan did that each and every game, even in the very, very bad ones.

Ryan Callahan for Extra Effort. The guy truly has gone above and beyond.



Around the League:

Forgive me that I'm still not getting around to the Coyotes quotes that I promised earlier in the week. It's been another busy one. They will come eventually.

In other Saturday action, THE game to watch was Montreal/Toronto. Granted, I did not watch because I was at the Garden, but I got the score update and when it was 3-0 Toronto, I took a breath and thought about those in Montreal.

Here's my personal opinion. As a hockey fan and a fan of all that is great in hockey, I would surely have loved to see the Montreal Canadiens make the playoffs, in this, their 100th season. I know all of Montreal wanted the same thing.

But, as was the case when Montreal played Boston in the opening round of last year's playoffs, I was forced to face reality. Whoever the better team is, they should be the team moving forward. It doesn't always work that way - I honestly think Boston was the better team in that series - but most of the time the water levels out.

If Montreal does not make the playoffs this year, it is because they just weren't good enough. It will be a shame for their fans and for the city, but it has to be that way.

I've listen to debates rage on the Team990 and on HNIC for months now, about everything from a lack of passion, the necessity for franchophone coaches, incidents of inpropriety with those with mob connections to the never ending saga of Alex Kovalev. I've listened to it all.

My personal advice. If the Habs make the playoffs, fine. But if they do not, everyone in that organization needs to take a gut check. Granted, the team stands to be a different team anyway next fall because of free agency and contract expirations, but whoever is left has to take that time. That time to see what pieces belong, those that are not needed, and what they want from this team.

Do they want to be a team that has to have a franchophone coach and players from Quebec, even if another coach or another player is better? Do they want a team that has leaders that the players can emulate, as PJ Stock brought up on Friday's show?

They are the Montreal Canadiens. They should want to be the best hockey team in the league. With players who understand that. A key group of leaders, but more importantly, a group of guys who take TRUE pride in the sweater. A group of guys that even if they are not the best, will take every effort night in and night out to be the best, so that even the fans can say, yes, they gave their all.

True, in Montreal, the city where the team is disected by each and every person in the media and on the streets, such things are hard. But all the more reason for the management - whoever that may be going forward - to make sure they have the right group of players in that locker room. The right mix with the right attitude. If ever a player on a team needed a rock solid attitude to do their jobs it is for that team, in that city.

I am not sure what quite changed with Montreal from last year to this. I thought they would be among the best in the east. They don't have too many more games to figure it out.

This Is Getting Old Folks. . .

It is indeed getting old folks. And not just the losses. No. I've been a Rangers fan long enough to see them lose plenty - plenty! - of games.

No. It's the way they are losing. The same way, over and over. With lifelessness. With an utter lack of intensity. With what appears to be an almost unbelievable inability to score goals. And with the same - same! - stale answers from the players and from the coaching stuff.

It's getting hard to take.

Hockey is a pretty fundamental game. To win, you must score goals. Note, no team has ever WON a game without scoring a goal (And for all those trying to prove me wrong, you inevitably have to net a goal in a shootout in order to win that too. Back when there were ties, it could be 0-0 forever, but well that is not a win either).

To score goals, you don't have to be fancy with the puck. But you do have to be decisive with it. You can be simple, but not so simple that the goalie has no problem whatsoever stopping the puck.

The Rangers, it seems, have lost all fundamentals, and the most basic of all is the prime example. The cannot score. And if they do, it's four goals in a game, and then right back to struggling mediocrity the next.

I didn't watch the game. Yet I can very easily imagine, based on the last ten or so, how it went down. Fell down 2-0 early. (Sound familiar?). Fell down 3-0. TV sets around the greater NY metro area turn off because all Rangers fans know there is a one in a million chance the Rangers will come back to tie. A one in a billion chance they will come back to win.

I have no major insight as to why they are so horrible. Why they can't do the one thing so fundamental to this game we all love. I don't. I do think it's beyond comprehension that an entire team of professionals - yes professionals - would all go dry at once. I do. For let's face it, it's not just been these last ten or so games. It's been the whole damn year. And the powerplay woes. The powerplay hasn't been good in three years now. Tell me that's not a drought of epic proportions, one that is probably close to rivaling all time worst status, for any team.

And yet, same stale team. Same stale response. Same stale answers.

Look, I'm not sure what else they are supposed to say, except stale responses. But it is so rare to get one of them - any one of them - save Mara and Hank to show some emotion post game.

I like Hank. Hank is an open book. He might give post game interviews that are easy to digest, but he is one of the - if not the - most intuitive about his own performance. I feel his answers, while not flashy, are extremely thoughtful. And at times when he is angry at himself- as I've seen more often this year than in the last three preceeding it - you can tell. You can look in his eyes, hear the tone in his voice, and tell. He's still professional. But you can tell.

I'm not even going to get into Renney's repetitively stale answers and why for that reason alone this guy should not be let within 20 feet of an interview room. Accountability? For the players? We all know how well that has gone. What about himself? What about accountability for himself and his staff? Are they fooling anyone into thinking they are actually trying to fix this team? Trying anything different? Trying anything at all?

I was a few weeks behind on HNIC and caught up a bit yesterday. Kelly Hrudey and PJ Stock brought up something very interesting in their now apparently weekly analysis of the Montreal team. (And parallels between here and there are sometimes very eerie).

They talked about how a goalie's body language can affect the rest of the team and how the personality of a player or two can carry over to the rest. They showed the sequence of the 7-2 pasting that Montreal got at the hands of the Oilers. Carey Price looks defeated. They showed his eyes. Wide, staring at his defensemen. Asking, what is going on here? Staring to the bench. Defeated. A man defeated. A team defeated.

Now, they used Price as the example. There is a lot more going on there than he, that's for sure. And I'm not even trying to parallel goalies here, although in that game in - wait for it - Montreal when Hank and Renney got into a little screaming match on the bench and Hank started screaming at Gomez, I could see a parallel. Hank (and Vali) this year have been let down by their entire team. Watching the Montreal D not do anything to stop Edmonton (literally standing there) was no different than watching the Rangers D against Dallas when Vali was in net in their 10-2 diabacle. Absolute statues.

Before I get too far from where I was going with this, I have thought and perhaps I have alluded, but I think now, more than ever, this team has taken on the personalities of each other.

Look perhaps Drury, Redden, and the crew were always softspoken men with out the ability to dazzle. Maybe on that we should not be shocked.

But surely Naslund had more life in his years in Vancouver. We've all seen Gomez with more life. Zherdev. Dubinsky. The list can go on and on.

This team admits they like each other - they really like each other. That's all fine and good. But...if they have fallen - as it desperately appears they have - into this hole of complacency, this world of free-fall of which there seems to be no cure, then it is not fine. It's NOT fine.

And the only thing that makes it worse is how every player (save a precious few), has taken the same exact nosedive. At the same exact time. In the same exact way.

One passionless player can affect a team. Look no further than whatever the heck was going on in Montreal with Alex Kovalev.

Kids on a team look to the leaders. Teammates on a team look to those that have done it before.

Maybe Gomez worked in NJ, because the team fed off personalities like Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko. Perhaps Drury worked in Colorado because he had a team of big talent and everyone followed the Joe Sakic mold. (Goalie troubles understood, but that Colorado team is a shadow of it's former self without Sakic to look up to, I feel).

Then take those two players - Gomez and Drury - and throw them into a situation where they have to lead, they have to inspire. Look at what happens! There is no heart. There is no passion. It's a sad group of non-leaders leading this team right back into obscurity. I really feel the whole damn thing has been contagious. I really do. Not everyone can possibly be this bad.

And if it's not the teams "leaders" and their stale personalities that are poisoning this team, perhaps it is the other man in charge that let it get that way.

If this is the team you wanted, Tom Renney, congratulations. They keep doing the same thing over and over, and failing miserably at it. They keep displaying boring and vanilla to the point that it's become the norm. And to justify it, they keep throwing out the same stale worthless answers - "We've got to be better. I thought we played well. We need to get back to winning." - night after night.

Sound familiar coach? Don't tell me you haven't heard it before.

I have no more words than that. No more pressing thought that that. This team's troubles are at an all time worst, and there is no one - no one on this team right now - that can fix the personality crisis that is so obviously poisoning this team.

Gomez was right though, in what he said after the Dallas game earlier this month. That was not rock bottom.

The only thing sadder than that realization of truth: there is not that much further this team has room to fall.

Rangers, Young Stars, Brendan Shanahan and Jaromir Jagr. . .?

Rangers:

Okay, this will be short and sweet. I was at a bar watching the game last night, and as so often happens when I'm at a bar watching a game, I cannot pay full attention. Too much noise, no sound on the TV, and someone's head always in the way. ;)

That being said, it apparently was as much the goalie's duel as it appeared from my vantage point. Credit Valiquette with what seemed to be a good game and for getting his team a point. Ryan Miller might have been spot on, but the Rangers seem to have this problem with scoring, if you haven't noticed.

I looked at Prucha's numbers today and he played 17:23, which is not only a season high, but a very high number for him in general. I only saw that he was on the ice for the goal against, although I didn't really see how it transpired. I figured though, as I lamented with a friend at the bar, that might be enough to anger Renney. You know how it works. No goals or assists to speak of, and you never know what will happen.

That's pretty much all I can say on the game. Looks like Rozsival took a face to the boards and might not play tonight. I will have to go back and take a look at that. If he can't go, Bobby Sanguinetti will make his NHL debut in Ottawa.

Game starts in just over an hour. Have fun guys.


Young Stars:

Congrats to Dubinsky and Marc Staal for making the squad. Staal is very much deserving, and Dubinsky had a great year there last year. I think the new format will prove interesting. But my first thought upon looking at the rosters was - -

Rookies are going to clean up!

Maybe that's not fair, and maybe it's going to prove very wrong, but as much as I like sophomores Staal, Nicklas Backstrom, Devin Setoguchi, Bryan Little, and Milan Lucic, I have to think that in that open ice setting, guys like Michael Frolik, Steven Stamkos, Kris Versteeg, and Blake Wheeler will score more goals.

And even if they don't, they have Drew Doughty, Luke Schenn, and goalie Steve Mason on the backend.

Either way, that will be fun!


Brendan Shanahan a Devil. . .?

http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=262692&lid=headline&lpos=topStory_main

TSN says - almost? maybe? I'm not sure if we can trust completely, without a contract or agreement, believe this is 100% going to happen. But, face it, if he were going to play, he'd play as near to NY as possible. So NJ does not surprise me. I DO NOT like the Devils, but I hope the perennial good guy does well if this is how it shakes down. More when it becomes official.


The Man Known As Jaromir Jagr:

I miss Jaromir, badly. So badly. Especially when this team is not scoring and their current captain lacks anything resembling a pulse.

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/22224-THNcom-Blog-Jagr-says-return-to-Penguins-not-out-of-the-question.html

Turns out, he might consider returning to where it all began for him, in Pittsburgh. If Mario wanted him to. Apparently all is not rosy in Russia.

Hmm.

I have so many opinions that I can't even express. I did not want Jagr to leave the Rangers. This man transformed a team that was going and had been going nowhere for almost a decade. He believed, he guaranteed, he made it happen. A historic run for him on Broadway.

People may disagree and argue over whether the Rangers are better or worse without their departed leader. I think we can all agree they are different though. And in my mind, certainly more vanilla. (Again, Stamkos, not the good kind).

If Jagr decides to come back to the NHL, and to Pittsburgh, it will be weird for a dozen reasons. I won't want him to play badly because I care for him and respect him so much. But the Penguins are a now very much hated rival for me. Then there's the whole quasi-hatred for #68 from those fans in Pittsburgh. I wonder how it would all pan out. With a year and a half more on Jagr's contract in Omsk, perhaps it isn't even worth it to think that far ahead. So much can happen.

But would I like to see Jagr return to the NHL and have a full-out farewell tour...? Absolutely. He deserves it, he really does.