With that said, just look at his numbers. Of course he's playing behind a team hardly noted for their defensive prowess, but sorry, 3.21 and .889 is horrendous, near the bottom of the 50-some goalies on record this season. And, quite honestly, it's not like the defense was bad every night, Blackburn just couldn't stop much of anything in the last 2-3 weeks of his 18 game run, both his fault and the fault of the coaches who didn't give him a rest in a busy schedule. Now, with Dunham in the picture, the schedule lighter and the Rangers needing lots of wins in a hurry, Blackburn hasn't seen the ice since Dunham arrived, and I wouldn't be surprised if he got 5 starts the rest of the season. I don't think he's eligable at 19 years old, but the minors would probably be the best place for Dan right now. Night after night of work to fix those bad areas in his game, like dropping too early and freezing up on breakaways.

The laundry list of errors is too long to go through, but I'll just throw some out from the top of my head: Too much reliance on Messier, line combinations that defy logic, sticking with the Petro-Nedved-Dvorak line forever even though they haven't been great as a line in what seems like years, overplaying Blackburn, not doing anything about the awful play of Dvorak, Kasparaitis and Samuelsson, not having the commitment to stick with a 4 line, hard hitting roster/line make up, even though that's how the Rangers have played some of their best games of the season, backing down after the stand he took in Columbus by banishing Oliwa, backing down on the dead-on criticism he had of Dvorak, trying to present too much of a positive attitude when the players seem to need discipline more than anything, not having any sort of neutral zone system, and so on, and so on...

Everyone has their theories; it's Messier, it's Trottier, it's Sather, it's Dolan, it's lack of familiarity, it's lack of a system, it's the corporate structure, it's Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Here's my theory: it's the sea. The rolling, relentless sea has claimed braver heroes than the Rangers in it's briny depths. What else am I gonna say? Yeah, it's everything mentioned above and a bag of chips, too. The goaltending hasn't been very good until Dunham arrived, very few players have been stepping up, the Rangers lack of a defensive system (other than "backchecking", like that's a system!) has been killing them, the refereeing has stunk, and so on, and so on. Funny thing, though, while this team has turned me off like very few other Ranger teams have, I still think they can make the playoffs. That's not based on some dopey Romper Room-esque grasping at the sun coming out tomorrow, but based on a bit of logic. They have good goaltending now. When Bure comes back the offensive takes a big step forward. When Leetch comes back the defense becomes a lot more settled. Their schedule is much lighter, while everyone else's in the East gets heavier. Eh, it could happen. But it probably won't.