
Captain Jagr of The New York Rangers must have read my previous posts and decided to do something about it tonight against the NY Islanders. Jags lead and delivered for the Blueshirts tonight punching home his sixth goal of the season and first goal of the game eight minutes into the first period. Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Brandon "Dubie" Dubinsky scored the subsequent goals, beating our rival New York Islanders 4-2 - the first win of four meetings this season. A pleasant surprise seeing our free agents and veterans dominating the scoring sheet for once. Whew...
Henrik Lundqvist made 22 saves for the Rangers, who closed the season's second month with a strong 10-3-1 record and with this victory moved back into a first-place tie atop the Atlantic Division with Philadelphia. Both are three points ahead of the Islanders.
The Rangers ended with 2 of the 5 power plays, a huge improvement over our dreadful PP record this season.
Huge kudos to Ryan Callahan, though not scoring any points, gave everything he could in his debut return from injury-land setting up plays, taking the hits, crashing the DiPietro head first and getting back up to attempt the rebounds. This kid is the real deal and as long as Slats and Co. can keep him on the roster, our future is going places. Ditto to Dan Girardi and Marc Staal -- a.k.a. Mr. Cool and Mr. Collected -- who have provided those gifts we've asked Santa for this fine holiday season -- Marek Malik, our defensive starter continues to be out on injured reserve, and despite his injuries will be receiving a stocking full of coal. Jason Strudwick deserves special attention as he played a marvelous game of hockey. Impressive.
This Saturday the Blueshirts have our third meeting against the now-semi-struggling Ottawa Senators, the Rangers having lost two close matches earlier this season. New York brings an improved team to the table and we all expect our top game leaving the "Canadian Capital the Blues".
Jaromir Jagr deserves "the most improved player" award from The Dark Ranger, but I wouldn't go as far as saying 'he is back' -- for God's sake, tonights win was only the Islanders!!?
tdr