If Henrik Lundqvist ever aspires to leave the club of "the greatest Ranger goalies to never win a Cup," he is going to have to improve his game. In the club are guys like Eddie Giacomin, Chuck Rayner and an assortment of lesser stars. Guys who made the Hall of Fame and are Cupless. Henrik has to learn how to score goals. You think I jest?
Taylor Pyatt scored a goal at 3:53 of the second period, a redirect of a Ryan McDonagh shot, that put the Rangers up 1-0. For the next 36:07 the Rangers got all of ten shots on goal. Ten shots! This game was one of the most one-sided 2-1 games I have ever seen. This may have been Lundqvist's best game in this playoff. The Rangers were credited with 24 shots on goal. The goal counter must have had ten shots in the bar before the game. Brian Boyle got 19:41 of ice time. No shots and he got toasted on faceoffs losing 17 of 21. Michael Del Zoto got 24:42 of ice time, was a minus 2, got 2:06 of PP time and was an uninterested spectator on Daniel Paille's winning goal. These are two of the coaches 'pets', guys who don't 'stink'.
The Rangers were completely dominated by Boston's fourth line of Paille, Shawn Thornton and Gregory Campbell. The line had one goal, four assists, six shots and seven hits. They assisted on Johnny Boychuk's goal. They swarmed around Lundqvist like angry hornets. The Rangers had no answer. We have no fourth line. Hell, we have no third line and our two top lines are made up of an assortment of 6-8 players who have no idea of what their roles are or should be. Hell, our coach doesn't know.
The power play was 0-2, 0-10 in this series and is 2-32 in this playoff year. It's not even worth talking about or discussing. None of the coaches have a clue. This game and this series is bringing out all the 'warts' on this Ranger team. We have no depth. The coach played all year to get "the two points" and never developed a strong bench. He overloaded three defensemen, Girardi, McDonagh and Del Zotto with massive ice time. It cost the efficiency of two of the players and led to a large exposure of the third. You figure it out.
So now it's fourth and goal and the ball is on our one yard line. Is it hopeless? Of course not. Even Custer thought he had a chance. Like our Rangers he lacked the depth needed to turn the tide. Lundqvist may still steal one, but to ask the King to steal four might be the impossible dream.
Stars seek answers, down 2-0 again to Knights
35 seconds ago
Why did the Rangers even bother to come to the rink yesterday. The team has reverted back to how they were playing in February and March. We played the game like we were taking warm ups, no intensity, no passion, so passive. We have become a team that takes no chances and is perfectly content to let Henrik do ALL the work. Ok Henrik here you go, we got you one goal now do your thing. The Rangers sit back the entire game, they seem perfectly fine with this, and after the game they will tell you we played a good game we just didn't get the extra goal. After game 2 Cally said we played one of our best games up until the 3rd! What??!!! Is he nuts?? See,they were fine with the game 2 effort going into the third because it was a tight game. They don't care that they're not playing at a playoff level because all they're looking to do is tie it and win it in OT. But it backfired and we got lit up. Why? Because Henrik didn't save our ass. So then game 3 comes along and guess what? We are just looking to keep it close. And we did and oops we lost. That wasn't supposed to happen. But hey what are you going to do, it was a close game and that's all you can do, right? WRONG. This team never comes out hungry, we don't dictate play, we don't play to our strengths, we don't exploit other teams weaknesses. All we do is wait and wait and wait and wait and wait some more. Oh we are awesome at that. But we got some good looks and we got a bad bounce so what are you gonna do. Why even play? If its such a game of chance why don't we line up at center ice, flip a coin and whoever calls it right wins! That'll be fun!
There were a couple of times during the game last night that I was thinking to myself, 'When did the Bruins go on the power play?' Because it seemed like there were six Bruins and three Rangers in the Rangers' end battling for the puck.
This is a good article on why Torts must go:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1646473-new-york-rangers-tortorella-has-overstayed-his-welcome
The team got out coached again... nothing new here, I just hope it is not a sweep.
Henrik should demand a trade this off season...
Jeanine- the coin toss idea would save us a lot of grief that's for sue lol.
This is truly painful to watch. As Jeanine pointed out there's no passion. This was billed as a series where an old rivalry would be renewed. Where two teams with similar philosophies would collide and the hate would be passed down from my father's generation to mine and so fourth. There's no hate. There's no intensity and there is certainly no rivalry. The control your emotions, play it straight, be as safe as possible philosophy of Tortorella has put the Rangers in a trance and they just come out and do the same thing over and over and over expecting a different result because they have been taught that teams who "stick with it" are supposed to eventually get rewarded. But that's not happening. EVERYONE has this guy's one trick game plan figured out. It's really not that hard. The entire Garden seemed to be in a coma last night. That was playoff hockey? No heart, no emotion, no urgency just total control over every aspect of the players actions and emotions by the clueless coach. And I'm going to tell you right now that there is no one in this universe who can tell me that the players just don't care because I know that to a man each of these guys care. They do as they are told. If they react and show their heart and use their emotion as motivation it could be very risky. That could lead to a penalty which could lead to a chance for the opposition to score a goal which would lead to the benching of the penalized player.... This game based on fear has led the players right into the trance I mentioned. They do not trust themselves to make the right decisions so they second guess and just defend, defend, defend. Because that rope-a-dope crap is just so much safer than actually trying to score some goals right? As pundit said we have no depth because the players have no identified roles. We have no chemistry because the lines are always in the blender. These guys don't know what they are doing anymore and the give up your body for the cause routine is getting old and wearing them down. We made trades and personnel changes at the deadline to prolong the life of the coach which has worked for him for a while but its wearing off already. It truly astounds me how many people still defend this guy's incompetence. People still saying its all the players fault. One guy on twitter said that firing the coach would be a knee jerk reaction... knee jerk? Its been four years of changing the personnel to the coaches liking and every year we talk about the same problems. 4 years. Now we will show more players the door and guess what? We will have the same problems in years 5, 6, 7 and so on. How many years do we give it? How much of Henrik's prime do we sacrifice? How much confidence of young players like JT Miller and Chris Kreider do we sacrifice? And for what? An average coach? A clueless GM? GET RID OF THESE CLOWNS ALREADY! Let's take the pieces we have and start building a team that can contend. My Lord, Dolan FACE IT or SELL. Please! Because I can't take it anymore.
averyrules - thanks for the great article. Seems like more people are talking about it now. Lets hope its enough.
I didn't watch the game, but did listen to the radio call, and it was also painful to listen to. The Boston players were always forcing the action, while the Rangers reacted.
Tortorella has got to go. I can not take another season of this. Tortorella's excruciating sucking of the life out of the game and his players has got to come to an end. Maybe a poor start next year will force Sather to pull the plug on disagreeable.
And it's official, Richie is the new Gaborik/Avery/Dubinsky. A few bad shifts and the heart to stand up to your disgusting coach and you get sent to hartford, columbus or benched and bought out. F**K torts, F**k Sather and F**k Dolan. I'm done until they're gone, or at the very least one of them. I don't care if they win 4 in a row here. F**k em.
Hailey and Newburry for Asham and Richie?! Think about that for a second.....yup it's that insanely dumb.
Bye Bye Rangers. Sorry Hank