Henrik Lundqvist watches the game-winning shootout goal, scored by the Bruins’ Zdeno Chara, as it gets past him and goes into the net.The Rangers took it to the brink of victory tonight against Boston, but still came away losers. One point is better than none can be this team’s mantra. With the win, the Bruins climbed over the Rangers in the Eastern Conference standings.
That the match made it to a shootout is evidence of the deficiencies in the Rangers’ game. Boston came from behind to tie the contest before their captain, Zdeno Chara, answered the call like a captain should and sealed the win for his club in the penalty shot contest.
In this particular game, it’s difficult to be down on Jaromir Jagr in terms of his offensive production. The Ranger captain scored a goal and notched two helpers tonight but the team couldn’t keep the lead. Henrik Lundqvist made 25 saves compared to Tim Thomas’ 36. Mind, there are conflicting numbers circulating right now. Some box scores are showing the Rangers as having faced 39 Boston shots, but — with the Bruins having taken less shots but netting the same number of goals as the Rangers — another point is made that the Rangers’ play is simply not good enough.
The goaltending needs to be tighter. If his counterpart is going to save all but 3 of 39 shots, Hank needs to save all 28 shots he faces.
The Rangers need to take less penalties. It’s obvious. It’s so unbelievably obvious … yet they still took twice as many penalties as their opponents today and were burned twice when down a man.
Five of those eight penalties were taken by defensemen. Marek Malik and Michal Rozsival each had two, with Paul Mara adding the fifth. When the defense take hooking penalties (4 of the 5 taken) it’s because they’re out of position or slow-footed or simply lazy. It’s unacceptable for a team’s supposed top two d-men to take four hooking penalties, regardless of whether they were bad calls or not.
Add to the liability created by the defense a sloppy too many men penalty and you start to see the story of a team without a clue. It’s bush league stuff. Throw in the Hanson brothers and a donnybrook every few minutes and you’ll have the Charlestown Chiefs.
You’d think, if it’s gotten old for us to keep harping on the same mistakes, and we’ve gotten tired of repeating ad nauseam what needs to be fixed, that the Ranger organization would have to know what we know. They must see what we see… right? Why, then, does nothing change?
A friend once told me that the definition of insanity is doing something, finding it has an averse affect, and the doing it again, repeatedly. My friends, by this definition, you can draw your own conclusion about this franchise.