PHILADELPHIA – Once again, Tom Renney beseeched his team to go to the net, this time at yesterday’s practice here at the Spectrum, this time loudly and clearly enough to be heard from the stands.
“Drive the net! Everybody understand the [expletive deleted] concept? Drive the net!” the head coach yelled at his players during one particularly exasperating drill in which the Rangers ambled up the ice as if it were, oh, say, the second period in Carolina. “You want to win [expletive deleted] hockey games? Wake up!”
If the Rangers don’t drive the net here tonight in the shiny but unfortunately antiseptic arena that replaced the Spectrum, they’ll be the only team on the ice that doesn’t. Indeed, in addition to the schedule that calls for three games in the next four days, Henrik Lundqvist’s difficulties in coping with the Flyers’ attack-the-net game would be a significant factor measured by Renney if, as seems likely, Steve Valiquette gets the call in goal.
The Rangers’ reluctance to go to the net remains puzzling, especially in this NHL environment in which the price a player pays for venturing into the slot is so dramatically discounted, and even more so because Renney talks about the necessity for doing so nearly every single day.
“It’s no secret that when you look at the goals scored on the highlights, at how many of them come from the paint,” Renney said. “We have to become a better second- and third-chance team if we’re going to win.”
That’s surely true. As such, Renney’s reluctance to give Petr Prucha any time on the power play is as puzzling as his players’ reluctance to go to the front, for if there’s any Ranger who is always willing to pay the price and absorb punishment by going to the net and staking out territory in front, it’s Prucha.
If there’s any player, flaws and all, who exemplifies second effort on the Rangers, it’s Prucha. But Prucha has been replaced on the PP by sniper Nigel Dawes. And the Rangers continue on their way as a perimeter team that’s easy to defend.
The Rangers looked slow in Carolina in Tuesday’s 3-1 defeat just as they always look slow against quick teams. Perhaps it’s time for the Rangers to summon Ryan Callahan and his wheels back to the NHL now that he appears to have relocated his game and his confidence in Hartford.
Perhaps that’s what Glen Sather was thinking as he watched practice, but there’s no way of knowing, for the GM rejected a formal request to take questions about the underachieving ninth-place team he constructed over the summer. Sather has not spoken to the New York press about the team all season.
It would be interesting to know what Sather thinks of Chris Drury, who continues to struggle. It would be interesting to know what the GM makes of Marek Malik’s one-game banishment. It would be useful to hear his take as the Feb. 26 trade deadline approaches.
One thing we do know, however, is what Renney feels about the necessity for the Rangers to drive the net. He made that point loud and clear. Now the question is what the coach will do about it – other than yell – if and when his advice is ignored.