Pandora's Box Is Now Open, NYR 3, Canucks 6

The New York Rangers blew it last night against the Vancouver Canucks. It exposed things we never wanted to see, knew was coming and, worst yet, exposed our NYR goalkeeper as "mortal with feelings."

Official recap here.

What was most embarrassing was how NYR defenseman "Mikky Mouse" Rozsival again allowed another team to score short-handed goals on his watch, this time within minutes of each other. Kalinen and Redden didn't do much to improve their performances either, but after four goals down -- most of which were not Henrik Lundqvist's fault -- our embarrassed NY goalkeeper took himself out of the "Luongo vs. Lundqvist Battle of The Greats!" and was replaced with Stephen Valiquette - who did a fine job holding his own as a 'Canuck onslaught of firepower' roared down upon him, layered with a continued defensive Ranger breakdown.

Holy shit, this game was bad.

The shiny glow is now rough like sandpaper.

We all knew in our hearts this was going to happen. It happens to every team in the league...but not quite like this. The Canucks are a good team with great goaltending, which is more than I've said of our very own New York Rangers this season (even with the winning record) -- but our defense exposed much more than liability last night, to the point where Chris Drury and Tom Renney called a team meeting directly after the game to address why this happened, what to do about it against future opponents and how not to psychologically let this happen to your goalkeeper. Rozzy and Kalinen were immediately split apart and the d-lines have been chemically altered once again -- so hopefully our D-man rookies (and the only forechecking players on our Blueshirts) Dan Girardi and Marc Staal can teach our new-Lurch Kalinen and our five-million dollar Mouse-man how to play a steady formation

"you see, if two of us push forward, it is important for us to cover the center line and we wouldn't want a cross-ice-pass that would allow even a rookie to have the equivalent of a penalty shot on our exposed goalie"

I am actually sad to see how exposed we really are. Ottawa on Saturday and Phoenix on Monday are two sadly lacking teams with problems of their own, but the cracks have been exposed, Pandora's box of vulnerability is open to the world to see -- and I am afraid last night's effort will make Tom Renney even more cautious (and defensive) and we will be watching more boring hockey with one and two goals. The way I see it, this is an opportunity to do what most teams would not expect of us -- offensive hockey. Crash the net immediately, let Zherdev & Sjostrom handle the puck for more than 11 minutes a game, plant Voros and Drury in front of the net at all times and shoot, and shoot, and shoot and shoot.... This was our 'opening of the season New York Rangers' and we are slowly becoming something admirable to Lou Lamarillo -- a defensively-minded-only hockey squad with All-Stars we don't use.

In other words, a Tom Renney hockey team. Ugh.

tdr