Report Card: NYR 5 @ SJ 4
Tuesday - November 12, 2002
| 11/11/02 |
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| New York Rangers |
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| San Jose Sharks |
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| Player | Ice Time | Grade | Comments |
| Dan Blackburn | 56:38 | B- | Made a few big saves in the 1st, one on a Selanne mini-breakaway and a few nice ones towards the end of the period. Both 2nd period goals against were on netmouth deflections, hard goals to blame Dan for. 3rd period, the third goal was yet another deflection from in front. Finally, on a penalty shot, Blackburn got smoked again and didn't look like he had a chance, like he does on almost every breakaway. 5-4 and the game on the line he did make several key saves in the 3rd. Overall I'm giving him a "B-", but in the final 10 minutes of the game he was an "A" or so. |
| Brian Leetch | 25:04 | B | A few lazy giveaways in the 1st were getting my blood boiling. But with a lot of PP time for the Rangers in the game Leetch was able to do what he does best and got a goal on a screen point shot in the 2nd. |
| Tom Poti | 24:59 | B | Solid game at both ends. Good stats for a defenseman: assist, +2 and 3 shots. Also had a massive 11:44 of PP time. |
| Vladimir Malakhov | 18:51 | B | His game has been on an upswing lately, finally for the first time this season. Making a lot of good defensive plays and passable at offense. |
| Dale Purinton | 17:39 | C+ | Not a bad game but a few instances of bad positioning and over-zealous passing weren't nice to look at. Got some PP time, actually didn't look like a joke on it. |
| Darius Kasparaitis | 15:36 | B- | One step at a time, and he's still not crushing anyone, but his mistakes have been getting fewer. Didn't make any tonight that I remember. Hopefully the confidence for the big hits comes back soon. |
| Sylvain Lefevbre | 14:56 | C | On the ice for at least two against, one of them was Sturm's PP goal where Marco got in behind Lefebvre on the PP for a deflection. |
| Eric Lindros | 21:01 | C+ | Give him credit for keeping his head up and seeing TWO different freight train Marchement hits coming and getting out of the way of both of them. Last season I'm not sure he got out of the way of either of those. Decent game, but like Bure, both players are in the worst scoring slumps of their careers and just need to score already. |
| Rem Murray | 15:47 | A- | He's really starting to put some goals in lately, and becoming more and more important to this team. The 1st period goal was mostly set up by Barnaby but Murray was in perfect position and got the shot away quick. Also got the fifth Ranger goal, a nice deflection on the PP. The final tally is 2 goals, 1 assist, +2, 4 shots, 4 for 4 on faceoffs. Hell of a night. |
| Pavel Bure | 20:13 | C+ | I'd like to see the staff give him about 25-27 minutes a game for a while to see if that snaps him out of his funk. Didn't play a bad game, got off quite a few (5) shots, several of them laser beams, and I don't recall any going wide. But he's got to score. |
| Petr Nedved | 18:54 | B- | Pretty good game. Even when he's not scoring he's been playing a reliable game with few mistakes this season. |
| Ronald Petrovicky | 15:30 | B | Scored the opener, a nice up-and-over deflection from in front on the PP. The one thing that bothers me with him is, like I mentioned last card, he's good for at least one bad minor penalty per game. Tonight it was two of them. |
| Radek Dvorak | 18:58 | C | One shot. Nothing else of note. |
| Mark Messier | 19:31 | C+ | Took a LOT of key defensive zone draws down the stretch... don't know why, as Messier lost most of them. Was 9 of 25 on faceoffs for 36%. |
| Matt Barnaby | 9:44 | B | Great play on the Rangers second. Waved the out of position Purinton to where he was supposed to be, stayed in his own position at the Sharks blueline to block an outlet lane, skated in and faked a shot, passed over to Murray for a gimme. And how's THIS for drawing a penalty?! In the 2nd period he drew 37 minutes of penalties on Todd Harvey on one play, giving the Rangers 7 consecutive minutes of PP time, 5 of those major. One of the better Rangers tonight. |
| M. Samuelsson | 13:01 | C | He made a few dumb plays late in the game with a 5-4 score, not getting the puck deep. Also didn't have much flow in the offensive end. |
| Ted Donato | 5:43 | B | Great play forechecking behind the net, coming out with the puck, avoiding a Harvey bodycheck and putting it through Kiprusoff's legs at about 6-8 feet away. Pretty goal. |
| Sandy McCarthy | 4:56 | C+ | The 4th line had some good shifts early but a bad shift in the 3rd, getting pinned in their end. |
| Rico Fata | 4:58 | C+ | Not much he can do from the 4th line, but didn't do much, anyway. |
| COACHING STAFF: | B | With Trottier suspended, Shoenfeld, O'Reilly and Green were the co-coaches, doing their usual jobs. I liked how they rolled 4 lines early on, and took what turned out to be a very smart time out late. A solid game, didn't look much different outside of the 4th line getting a little more time than usual. | |
| 1st PERIOD: | B+ | Rangers completely dominated the period. Shots were 13-13 somehow, but quality scoring chances were probably something like 8-1 in favor of the Rangers. Rangers had a hard forecheck at the SJ blueline, a system which has killed the Rangers several times this season (see the Kings game, for example), and it worked - forcing the Sharks to commit multiple turnovers and stopping any flow they had through the NZ. | |
| 2nd PERIOD: | B | The two goals the Rangers gave up were both deflections on the PP, so for criticism of the period about all you can say was they were too weak in clearing out the net area on the PP. Otherwise another very solid period, Rangers taking advantage of a sloppy, over-aggressive Sharks team by playing disciplined and steady and letting the Sharks hand the game to them. | |
| 3rd PERIOD: | D- | Take the flow and dominance of the first two periods, now reverse them. Sharks owned this period, outworking, outhitting, out-everything the Rangers. Were it not for a few good saves by Blackburn and some good shifts by the Rangers 1st and 2nd lines with under 3 minutes left it was easily a tie game, if not worse. | |
| OVERALL: | B- | Man, am I angry. I forgot to update my fantasy
hockey roster yesterday and get Sturm and Marchment into the starting lineup
for tonight, and they had a goal, 2 assists and 9 shots between them. DAMNIT!
The game itself? Oh, that was okay. Actually, it wasn't so okay, but a win is a win and the Rangers need them. The Sharks were awful in the first two periods - sloppy, undisciplined, unorganized and the Rangers played disciplined and steady and had the game handed to them, along with a tons of power plays. 3rd period, though, the 'ol Ranger confidence was shook as it usually is when the other team presses the issue. Rangers deserve credit overall, though. They did what they had to in the first two periods and at least in the 3rd didn't quite crumble all the way, but as far as this being one of those wins to "build on"? Nah. |
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| Scratches: | Bobby Holik (IR? - hip), Dave Karpa (IR - elbow), K. Oliwa (suspended - game 1/5), Mike Richter (head injury) | ||
| created by: | Pete Rocha, © 2002. procha@optonline.net | ||
| Discuss the card here |
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