CAN we please stop with the com parisons between Aaron Voros and Sean Avery? For better or worse, there are few similarities between the players beyond their shared willingness to go to the front of the net and absorb the punishment necessary to be effective in that hockey battle zone.
There are Rangers who celebrate the differences more than they celebrate the similarities, and that is surely their right. But be advised that Avery most certainly would not have been just another spectator in Washington, D.C., on Saturday when the Capitals made it their business to run Henrik Lundqvist and his teammates.
This isn’t to suggest the burden was on Voros alone to attack Washington goaltender Brent Johnson, or to throw down with Alex Ovechkin after the winger buried Marc Staal early in the game at the side of the net, or to confront Donald Brashear when he clobbered Chris Drury in open ice (without the puck) midway through the first period.
If that’s not Voros’ style, then that’s not his style. There were 17 other Rangers’ skaters dressed for the game, including Colton Orr.
The Rangers don’t have anyone like Avery, they don’t have anyone who will intimidate, and they don’t have anyone to provide a deterrent. This is the way the team was constructed. They’re small. They’re finesse-oriented. They lack size and snarl.
If it’s not entirely accurate to suggest that they can get pushed around, it sure is accurate to note that they’ve been getting pushed off the puck far too often, and especially on those nights that sophomore Brandon Dubinsky has difficulty asserting himself.
They want to play a puck-pressure game, but the forecheck has been AWOL much of the last three weeks. That’s as good a reason as any that the Blueshirts will take a back-to-the-pack 6-5-1 record over the last three weeks (11-5-1 overall) into tonight’s match at the Garden against the Oilers (7 p.m.; MSG, 1050 AM).
Then there’s the euphemistically known third line, the one with Chris Drury in the middle and Nigel Dawes on the left; the one from which Petr Prucha was removed (and benched) in favor of Fredrik Sjostrom for the final 4:30 of Saturday’s 3-1 defeat following an ineffective performance.
Prucha, who has not been on the ice for a Rangers’ goal in going minus-one in eight games, will almost certainly be scratched tonight. It’s likely that he will be replaced by Dan Fritsche, who has not been on the ice for a Rangers’ goal in going minus-four in five games.
Before Saturday’s match, coach Tom Renney said that Lauri Korpikoski’s game had leveled off after having been assigned to the AHL on Oct. 29. That was before Korpikoski overcame his post-parting depression by recording a hat trick in Hartford’s 4-3 victory over Springfield on Saturday.
But Korpikoski, who earned a spot in training camp, was not recalled yesterday. The Rangers have scored two goals or fewer in three of their last four games, losing all of them. But they don’t need help up front. They don’t need size or snarl, either. Not at all.