Monday, November 8, 2010

You Win One, Then You Blues One

How do you beat a team named the St. Louis Blues (8-1-2) coming into the Garden having won six in a row?

You don't.

Or at least at Madison Square Garden you don't because we generally don't win games at home, and it was another crashing disappointment in front of the Garden faithful.  Coming off a fantastic Friday night shutout over the falling NJ Devils, this was not what anyone was expecting.

It was a battle of the backups as NYR's Marty Biron replaced Henrik Lundqvist and St. Louis' Ty Conklin replaced the shutout King Jaroslav Halak.  Biron did the best he could to keep the Rangers in the game, but ultimately he found no support, our d-men were unable to control our zone and the end result was Ty Conklin continuing his team's trend of shutting out their opponents.  The St. Louis Blues who managed to physical beat down on our New York Rangers, controlled the neutral zone and held our Blueshirts outside of their own blueline throughout the evening, even during a number of power play advantage opportunities, including a 'sorry-ass' Rangers five-minute power play (missed) opportunity. 

Official recap here.

The first period opened well, especially when the Rangers thought they had taken a 1-0 lead with 1:56 left in the first period, but a Frolov goal was immediately waved off by an odd and confusing high-sticking call by another ridiculous referee call.  Ref protocol, I suppose.

Blues' Steen took a pass from Brad Boyes during a 3-on-2 rush and snapped a shot from the high slot past Biron to make it 1-0 at 5:16 of the second period.

No Rangers stepped up after Stepan getting boarded.  This should never happen again.
During the third period after B.J. Crombeen received a five-minute major penalty for boarding Derek Stepan with 12:35 left and our boys only managed four shots.  The 'dump & chase' Rangers philosophy was in full effect and ultimately to no effect. But even more alarming was that, once again, this 'new & improved' tough Rangers squad were unable or unwilling to defend their own.  Perhaps Coach Torts' eyes were ready to bulge if any Ranger took a stupid penalty with only one goal on the boards, but I am surprised nothing became of this.  It was a ridiculous hit and there was no retribution.  Boogey?  Girardi (hardy ha)?  Yes, Prust launched shortly after, but again to no effect.
Sauer got more action from Boogaard than any Blues opponent

When your team is wronged, sending the right message is always about the right timing -- someone needs to teach our boys this.  Coach John Tortorella can talk about the right kind of penalty and he may talk-the-talk, but he is holding our boys back from retaliating - after last night, it is apparent that this is a trend that is becoming consistent:  "BEAT ON US, The New York Rangers".  I don't like the sound of that, and this needs to change.

One of the highlights was Sean Avery checking Tyson Strachan into the boards - which always amuses me at how embarrassing this must be to your fellow teammates. 

So we're a .500 team (7-6-1).  No surprise there.  Tomorrow night we play Alexander Ovechkin and his Caps at The Garden and it is almost certain Henrik Lundqvist will be in net, our only dependable and consistent wall of defense; expect to see him playing his heart out against an onslaught of Cap(tain) Crunch.

Maybe Boogey or Prust could make a run at Ovie?  Semin?  Green?  Something....anything....would get our attention back.  See you tomorrow.

tdr

2 comments:

  1. Dark I agree with you totally! As I've said before it's torts fault the Rangers don't retaliate .For all his so called bluster and toughness he lets his team play like pansies.As much as I detest the cyers they are taught and coached to react and come to the aid of a team mate where torts says don't we might get a penalty...Bullshit fight back earn some respect and get more room on the ice ,but I guess miss torts doesn't get that he's to busy scarying rookies with his fake toughness. He along with sayher need to go. Sather might have a pass from the idiot owner but we need a better coach with a better way use his player.We can also use some defenseman who hit and play defense.I'm sorry but Staal needs to go he is nothing like his brothers no fire,as should miss rosi,gilroy and eminger.Do we really have a player named Frolov? haven't seen him he must suck too.

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  2. Love this post. Love the pictures. The Blueshirts had difficulty with a strong defensive team. I have no clue about the retaliation (or lack thereof).

    Next test is the Capitals. The Caps scores a goal more a game and give up a goal a game more than St. Louis.

    Protect Henrik -- he is going to be run. I expect some fisticuffs tomorrow night.

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