The Rangers are hockey’s collective version of the stud baseball player who opens the season 2-for-25 and has to look at his .080 batting average plastered a mile-high for all to see on the center-field scoreboard when he comes to the plate.
Look at the stat sheet. Read every article. Listen to all the commentary. It’s all the same story, over and over and over. It’s unavoidable. Brendan Shanahan can’t score. Jaromir Jagr can’t score. Chris Drury can’t score. Scott Gomez can’t score. The Rangers can’t score. What a disappointment.
“There are background story-lines for each one of us,” Shanahan said yesterday following a round of lengthy team meetings and a brief practice session. “With me, it’s age. With Jaromir, it’s not having Mike (Nylander). With Scott and Dru, it’s their contracts and coming into a new environment.
“Except there are no excuses for anyone. I think our situation is magnified because it’s the first 10 games of the season, but that’s on us. We’re not playing bad hockey, but we’re just making it very tough on ourselves.
“I think we’ve become consumed with scoring when our focus should be on winning. We’re putting the cart before the horse. When we get our minds off of goals, wins will come, I’m sure of that.”
The 3-6-1 Rangers will entertain – uh, not so much, actually – the Lightning at Madison Square Garden tonight coming off an alarm-ringing 4-1 defeat to the Maple Leafs on Saturday that prompted coach Tom Renney to turn yesterday from an off-day into one at the office. But whereas some coaches might have turned the session into a punitive one, Renney used the time to focus on technical issues and the power of positive thinking.
“The one thing we have to be careful of is to give off the attitude that it’s just not going to happen with this group,” Renney said. “Because we do have what it takes, and we’ve demonstrated that, clearly.”
Well, not really, not yet, and not this group of players. Renney’s belief in his team is grounded in faith and in his evaluation of the team’s character. Shanahan shares that belief.
“I’d be really disgusted with our team if I felt we weren’t playing with the desire to get the job done, but that isn’t the case,” the winger said. “Defense is hard work, and other than getting away from it in Atlanta and the last half of Saturday night, we’ve been committed to it.
“Scoring, on the other hand, is a little bit of a mystery. It seems the less you talk about it, the more you do it, and the harder you try to score, the worse it gets. We have to stop focusing on why we’re not scoring and instead envision the end of the game when we’re at center-ice saluting our fans.
“Last year, when we needed to win 18 of our last 25 games to make the playoffs, or whatever it was, nobody looked at the box score,” Shanahan noted. “It was all about winning, and when we did, everybody got credit for it.
“There’s no quit in this room. Our determination to turn this around is not wavering at all. This is a good group.
“So I’d say to our fans, ‘Have faith in us. Stick with us. We’re going to battle our way through this, and we’re going to make you proud of us.’ “