Friday, September 26, 2008

Nedved Considers Full-Time Beach Bum!

Today New York Rangers Coach Tom Renney announced that the Petr Nedved experiment is over as he was released from training camp today. Thomas Pock also auditioned himself out of a NHL position.

Couldn't be happier with him not on the ice. Couldn't be happier with this babe.

tdr

Another Losing Success


Well, Dark here.

With the pre-season almost behind us, another loss to Tampa last night (now 1-4 in the pre-season) and one more big one to go here in the states (Devils, Sat. 1pm at MSG) you can be sure that we will finally see what will be closer to our starting roster and get a better sense of what this team will look like.

Long gone are the declarations of the "Gomez-Zherdev" chemistry and "this is the year of Prucha", and aside from the Kalinen (Malik) disaster ahead, one thing or another is for sure having watched all of these Renny-pre-season-experiments:

1. We will struggle with the power play again -- maybe cuts need to be made with our special team coaches.

2. We will outshoot every team we play and have difficulty finishing.

3. We will be relying on Henrik Lundqvist to create the wall necessary to solidify our defense.

4. On the positive side -- we are a fast team and with good coaching and hard work, this mix of veterans and youth could chemically become (there I go again with chemistry!!?) a team that can compete on a Cup level. With the perimeter play of Jagr, Straka, and dare I say, Shanny gone -- whatever the squad looks like, Slats and Renney have answered one of the missing links to the Rangers of the least three seasons -- a 'going to the net' offensive mantra. Thank God. With our 'ho-hum' defensive system in place for another season, it appears as though this system will be counter-balanced with potentially explosive front lines. I have to admit this is exciting stuff.

5. Not one Rangers blog has mentioned "Mats Sundin" in the last couple of weeks. I am happy with that.

Some terrific links regarding the roster and last nights game I would recommend, here (Blueshirt Bulletin), or here (Ranger Pundit), or here (Rangers Report).

The Dark Ranger is back with 'loving and hating' the team I always admire -- look out for a swarm of followers and flash-mobs wearing the latest TDR t-shirts at the Garden this season. The spirit of The Dark Ranger will be in Prague looking to diffuse any stormy weather and Lightning ahead. Keep checking in and thanks for the summer time off.

Jagr is gone. A dark tear is running down my cheek.

tdr

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Good Vibes


Sitting on my couch watching the Ranger/Senator game with some of my boys, a few guys stood out to me more than anyone else on the ice: Brandon Dubinsky, Nigel Dawes, Michael Del Zotto, Petr Prucha, Ryan Callahan, Corey Potter, and Mika Wikman. Dubinsky scored a pair of beautiful goals (skating with lots of confidence with the puck), Dawes and Prucha's line with Drury in between them seemed to have good chemistry with one another, they just couldn't bury the puck. The rest of the supporting guys all skated hard, hit as often as they could (which really made me jump for joy), and took a lot of shots (even out shooting the Sens, 36-19). I realized that even though my team was losing, I was very pleased with the play of all the guys I listed and for the team as a whole. The Sens dressed pretty much their entire NHL squad (minus Alfredsson and a couple 3rd & 4th line guys) and our young guys and backup goaltenders played a close game with them, even out shooting and outplaying them from the end of the 1st period on. The Rangers and all their fans should be more than pleased that we outplayed a good team without our insane top line of Naslund-Gomez-Zherdev, Redden-Girardi, Lundqvist...Now that is an accomplishment.

Monday should be an interesting game, with the rest of our team and Lundqvist take on the Sens for a rematch. The best we can wish for is that the Blue Team (the name given to this squad during training camp) plays just as well as the White Team did yesterday, and that when they are put together to form the full New York Rangers roster, we can all enjoy a successful Cup Run.
7 more games of this pre season bullshit and then we can finally watch how all of the summer predictions, trades and rumors play out..woo hooo!!

Oh I almost forgot, Blair Betts and Michal Rozsival wore the "A"s and yepp, you guessed it, Number 23, Chris Drury wore the New York Ranger "C". What a surprise..

~syr11


Friday, September 5, 2008

(UPDATED) An Official "Endorsement" for NO POLITICS!

This is a hockey blog. The Dark Ranger officially endorses this "no politics!" Thanks Anonymous!

tdr
This site/blog is not affiliated with the New York Rangers or The National Hockey League in any manner whatsoever. Some photos on this site are used w/out permission but are hosted on the blogger server, therefore not interfering with the profit or bandwidth of the original owner. If you are the owner of a specific image that we have used in our blog , please email me at amv613@hotmail.com to have it removed - we will gladly remove it immediately.

If you have a hockey blog/website and would like to place a link on our site, please contact me & we can do a link exchange (the best way to get more traffic to our blogs).

Any offer of 'tickets at cost' is exactly that -- I have season tickets and will sell them for what I paid --- so no mark-ups.

The Dark Ranger is a not-for-profit site, not officially, but we derive no income at all from anything on this site; in fact, DARK at his own expense enjoys the freedom of having no sponsors and speaking his f*cking mind.