Rangers' Rally Ends Skid

After a little over five minutes it looked liked the Rangers were headed for their seventh straight loss. Two quick Penguin goals put the Rangers behind the eight ball and a timeout was called by the coach. The timeout seemed to do the trick as the Rangers roared back with five unanswered goals, two in the first and three in the second, and hung on for a 5-3 win over the injury plagued Penguins.

Besides Crosby and Malkin being out with injuries the Pens also lost Cooke and Goddard to game suspensions over their massive brawl at the Coliseum on Friday night. But they came out like gangbusters and aided by a poor play by Eminger they scored their first goal. Engelland put a goal in off of Eminger, after Eminger lost his stick, and Johnson put one in that maybe Lundqvist should have stopped.

Eminger was rewarded for his transgression by getting all of 4:08 minutes of ice time for the entire game. Funny, I don't ever remember anyone else, maybe Avery, getting rewarded like that for making a poor play. But this is the world of coach disagreeable, a perfect book end to the Stealth GM.

The Rangers scored three power play goals, shattering their woeful streak on the power play. They did all the right things after the timeout. The first two goals, by Boyle and Callahan, were redirected shots. Callahan was a power play. Then in the second it was Prospal, Callahan, PP, and Anisimov, also a power play. A late goal by the Pen's Sterling cut the lead to two and the Rangers had to sweat out a double minor to Sauer, which they killed.

It was the second double minor the Rangers had to kill. Dubinsky took a stupid double minor which the Rangers killed. He was rewarded for his dumb play with almost 19 minutes of ice time. I guess not all "pigs" are created equal. But the Rangers won a game and stopped their skid and tomorrow the blame stream media will extol coach disagreeable for his "brilliant time out". The more things change the more they stay the same.

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