Wade Redden’s play was the elephant nobody talked about in the Rangers locker room, a drag on his team and every defense partner two coaches tried with him over two years.
Forced to justify a bone-headed salary of $6 million, Tom Renney and John Tortorella kept playing Redden while trying to find the best place to hide him. But now he is in Hartford. And we don’t have Wade to kick around anymore in the press box, on the Garden’s 300 level, or in the private thoughts of defense partners who had been showing how much better than can be without him.
After three games when the Rangers’ defense was as good as the forwards and the forwards as good as the defense, neither was very good last night and backup goalie Marty Biron was even worse. Fact remains, however, the Rangers’ top four defensemen were on for every one of the Atlanta goals, four at even strength in the 6-4 Thrashers win.
Marc Staal got beaten cleanly wide by Bryan Little on the first Atlanta goal and on the third had the puck hop over his stick on a pinch.
“[Little] was flying through the neutral zone and I was kinda standing still,” Staal said. “I went for a pokecheck, missed and he got around me.
“If I could take [the third goal] back, I would have stopped it with my skate along the boards, made sure.”
Dan Girardi drifted far out of position with no back-side help on the second Thrashers goal, and on the fourth, well, we’re not quite sure what he was doing when Anthony Stewart got a pass-out past Michael Del Zotto.
Michal Rozsival did not escape punishment, taking a first-period delay-of-game penalty that put the Rangers down two men before limping off in the third period with a knee hyperextension not believed serious. That’s good news, even if a booing Garden that has made Rozsival a better player on the road doesn’t want to believe how essential he remains.
“He plays most of the minutes because he’s in all situations,” Tortorella said in praise this week. “He gets turned over sometimes but has played some unbelievable hockey of late.
“He has stepped up his preparation, everything about his game. He’s a different player and it’s because he has a different intensity in practice that rolls over into the game.”
Because the Rangers don’t have a true No. 1 defenseman, they need Rozsival (on the offensive end) and Staal (on the defensive side) to play like good No. 2s.
They need for a talented No. 1 pick such as Del Zotto to continue to progress and for Girardi, whose mobility issues caused him to go undrafted, to remain a generally smart reader of plays, even if he wasn’t last night.
And then the Rangers need Matt Gilroy, Steve Eminger or Michael Sauer, all righties at risk on the left side, to prove trustworthy enough for Tortorella, who doesn’t have a 27-to-28-minute-a-game horse, to keep his top four from wearing down.
“They are engaged,” Tortorella had praised his defense generally before the game. “They have a little bit of arrogance in the neutral zone, standing up there, and in our end zone they are doing a much better job taking away time and space.”
Whatever room they leave only leaves more room for doubt about the 2010-11 Rangers. Inconsistency on the back line might have been the most consistent reason the Rangers struggled to ninth place last season. And last night suddenly it was 2009-10 again.