Rangers Tank In Montreal

There is no other way to describe it. It was a classic tank job. Our All World goalie was pulled. There was little discipline, we took a penalty, leading to a goal, 27 seconds into the game. Our power play was 1-7. Our defense was porous, the coverage was awful and giving up seven goals in a game five of the Eastern Conference Finals is unforgivable. Gimme a break! The best way to remember this game is to forget it.

As you all know I like to go back and tug at history. My family says I become too negative at times. So I go back two years and I am sitting at the Rock with number two son and we have come back from a two goal deficit to tie the game to go to OT. We are down in the series 3-2 after getting off to a 2-1 lead. And we lose. We lose because of poor coverage around the net. We lose because our defender is in back of our goalie instead of picking up the loose guy at the corner of the net. We cannot blow another series lead. We cannot!

But I digress. We have two shots to wrap this up. Les Habs have to win two games, we have to win one. We pulled this trick on the Pens coming back from a 1-3 hole to sweep them away. We don't want the Canadiens to do that to us. Let's repeat that. We don't want the Canadiens to do that to us. But, as I often say, we have to get back to basics. We can't play helter skelter hockey. As a kid growing up on the lower East Side of Manhattan I never saw a pond hockey game. Last night I saw one. It's fun for kids, it's horrible for pros.

We showed a lot of fight coming back from a 4-1 hole to tie it at four. So that is good, we have the fight, but we have to have discipline. So it is the big game six at the Garden, the clincher. We have the best money goalie in the NHL and Alain Vigneault has proven to be a good coach in critical times. As Mike Keenan was the right coach for the 1994 Rangers, AV is the right coach for the 2014 Rangers. Let's take the next step Thursday night and punch our ticket for the Cup finals.

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