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With an excellent opportunity to move onward and upward in the Eastern Conference the Rangers instead flopped and lost a precious game with only 11 more to play. The biggest cause for the loss was that old bugaboo, the power play. Actually the lack of a power play. This is the same inept power play that we have been talking about for two years and coach clueless doesn't have a clue in how to fix it.Last night it was 1-6, the one being on a five on three. The Rangers are 1-15, in the last four games, and are 3 for 31 in the last nine games. They rank 19th in the league among all teams. Now, you might ask, what does it matter about the power play? After all this is our first regulation loss in fourteen games, so it doesn't affect our game. How do we know that? Maybe instead of going 10-1-3 we could have gone 14-0, 13-1, who knows. It helped lose last night's game.
The clueless one stated, "I don't think it's too late to make a change." Wow! The guy really has a handle on things. Later he commented, "I'm thinking about Staal back there, that's not out of the question." Terrific. Seventy one games into the season and the clueless one is thinking about putting the best offensive defensman on the point. Too bad he didn't think about it during the game when Staal got all of 19 seconds on the power play. Meanwhile Rozsival got 3:30 of PP time with no shots, not even a missed one. Tyutin got 1:53 of PP time with no shots on goal and three missed ones. Straka got 16:53 of regular ice time, 1:32 of power play time with no shots at all. So three of the main point men with an accumulated power play ice time of 6:55 of ice time had a grand total of no shots on goal and three missed shots. And the clueless one thinks, thinks, it might be time for a change on the PP. Wow! He's right. It is time for a change. A change in the coaching staff.
You would have thought at the trade deadline instead of picking up two marginal players in Backman and Sjostrom we would have gotten a power play specialist. Wouldn't you think that? But wait a minute. We do have a power play specialist and his name is Petr Prucha. You guys remember him, don't you? He is non-existent under coach clueless. When was the last time he played? But how can he get back in the lineup when we have a new hero, Fredrik Sjostrom, who got all of 6:32 of ice time last night, including 33 seconds of power play time. Maybe he is our new PP specialist.
But all is well in Ranger La La Land. The Great Pretenders will conquer all despite their inept power play and coach clueless will prove that tic-tac-toe hockey is the wave of the future and damn the shoot the puck and crash the net hockey. He better be right, otherwise the Florida trip will turn into a lost weekend and instead of looking up and forward we will be looking back and downward. Stay tuned.
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