In a double streak ending contest, Henrik Lundqvist returned to form against the Devils today with his fifth shutout of the year, his twelfth careerwise and his second against the Devils this year. Lundqvist is now 9-2-3 against the Devils and Broduer since he came into the NHL. The win ended a three game Ranger losing streak and ended a nine game Devil winning streak. While Lundqvist only had to make 17 saves, he had two beauties in the first period. Thirteen seconds in, on sloppy play by the Rangers, he made a great save on Parise's deflection and then some more sloppiness by the Rangers forced him to make a great save on Madden's breakaway. Broduer made 28 saves and was voted third star.
Shanahan with the game winning goal, his tenth and second game winner, came off a beautiful feed by Gomez 30 seconds into OT. I wasn't there and watched the game on TV but I'll bet a big part of the crowd missed it coming back late to their seats because they needed another cheap beer. Shanny was the number one star and Lundqvist was number two. Broduer had no chance on the one timer. The Rangers have beaten the Devils four out of four this year.
While winning and having Lundqvist return to form was great, the Rangers overall problems still remain. The power play was 0-5 and it was the old story of pass, pass, pass and then pass. The number one line of Dubinsky, Jagr and Straka got all of two shots on goal the entire game and were practically useless on the PP where they got most of the time. The second line was spearheaded by Gomez who had a great game against his former team and got five shots on goal before setting up the game winner. The best line was the Drury, Callahan, Prucha line which played aggressive the entire game and got eight shots on goal.
It was fun listening to the drive by media announcers and commentators spinning what a great game plan coach clueless had in pulling off the victory. What? Henrik Lundqvist pulled off the victory. If you were watching you saw it, you don't need spinmeisters. Anyway, lets enjoy The Prince getting back to form and maybe one of these days the big O might actually wake up.
ICINGS: Nigel Dawes continued his hot streak with 2 goals and 3 assists in his last game. In 12 games with Hartford, Dawes is 9-4-23. Greg Moore in 24 games is 14-13-27. Remember what the great Redskin coach Allen once said, "The future is now."
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Sure glad we sent Dawes down, he can't play, can he? We don't need any offensive support... blah blah...
At least the King showed up and won this game for the team. Glad to see malik being scratched. He deserves to be moved (read: traded or released) for his comments the other day... Your take Pundit?
Santa came early this year by benching Lurch. Every game is sits is a notch for Renney. Maybe "Coach-not-as-Clueless" for a day, Mike?
Now THAT was the Henrik that we have come to expect - a renewed confidence.
A even-paced, defensive boring game at best. Shanny was nice at the end...
tdr
stryker-My take is your take. We don't need Dawes we have the other Hossa who is waiting to explode.
tdr-How can you say the game was boring? I only nodded off three times during the game and Micheletti kept telling me what a great game it was. Henrik made coach clueless look good for a day.
Well Mike, I have been thinking about this a while. I know what the problem with the Rangers is this year. Jagr has a shooting percentage for his career of 14.2. Last year it was 9.3 and now 8.5 The shoulder injury killed his shot. Shanny has a career percentage of 13.1. It dropped to 9.8 last year and is now 7.4%.
How do you fix this? You need to add a natural scorer or two onto the first two lines. Hossa is not the answer. Straka isnt either. Dawes might be. A trade would be nice. The defense is not the problem now that we finally sat Malik and are playing the kids. We need two great shots.
section 335-Excellent analysis. Yet, we keep giving the same guys more and more ice time and we don't have the patience to see the young kids develope. What's the answer? A blockbuster trade?