Hockeybird.com: Ottawa 9, New York Rangers 1

Welcome to New York, Jaromir Jagr. Hockey is different here. Rangers suffer their worst lost in over ten years -- the last six of which have been marked by humiliating failures and staggering crashes -- and get exposed and embarassed on a night when all of hockey was watching to see how their lastest star acquisition was going to fare. Let the record show that Ottawa pulled back too. Teams go through bad nights, games where everything goes wrong, where every mistake ends up in the back of the net. But when they do it one night after adding the most talented player in the league, it's a cry for help. The New York Rangers are an absolute mess.

Mike Dunham, after being worn straight into the ground by his utterly insane head coach -- would a sane coach watch his goaltender struggle against a team one afternoon and then, knowing full well that his goalie doesn't play well in consecutive games, START HIM AGAIN THE NEXT DAY AGAINST THE SAME TEAM THAT TORCHED HIM LESS THAN 24 HOURS BEFORE? -- Dunham finally gave in, took an uncontested and unchallenged elbow to the head, decided it was a mild concussion and will now take a short vacation to hopefully get himself and his game together. Jussi Markkanen, thrown to the dogs against the NHL's hottest team, looked like a guy that hadn't played in two weeks. And his backup had a friggin' picture of a muppet on his goalie mask. Don't start Ranger goalies this week.

Jagr played on a line with Jan Hlavac and Petr Nedved. The Antichrist's fantasy career is once again revived -- amazing. Anyway, once the score was 6-0 and Ottawa started pulling lucky fans out of the stands to finish the game, Jagr settled down and created some nice scoring chances. Yippee. As a fantasy owner you have to hate this deal, as no one ever comes to New York and gets better. Really the only ones that are going to benefit from this deal are Donald Trump, the Iroquois Nations, Worm, Teddy KGB and the rest of the cast of the movie "Rounders", and every stripper in New York City with more than two z's in her name. But that's just me.

Eric Lindros, who along with his linemates were the only regular players to be even in a 9-1 loss, continues to contribute and is close to averaging a point per game, even though his utterly insane head coach/GM refuses to provide him with a complementary scoring wing, never mind that he finds ways to short his ice time. Bobby Holik and Martin Rucinsky were basically awful, but no one was worse than Alex Kovalev. Kovy has put in the worst week that I think I've seen from a professional athlete, short of just outrighting shooting on his own goalie (not that he'd hit the net anyway), and yet his utterly insane head coach refuses to bench him. I hate being a Rangers fan.

Normally this is the space where I talk about the Rangers defense, which is really an oxymoron right now, but I think when you watch your favorite team give up nine goals in a 60 minute game, you earned the right to not bring up the subject for at least one column. I will say that Vlad Malakhov was hurt last night, hurt on an obvious penalty that wasn't called and, in fact, was a play that Eric Lindros was suspended for last year (even though Lindros didn't really do it, it only looked like he did). I don't know how long Vlad is out for, and I really don't want to talk about the defense. Instead I'm going to lie here in the snow and watch the clouds move. Mmmmm. Sigh. That one looks like a bunny.

Q: Is Overlord Sather really utterly insane. A: Yes. A thousand times yes. I'm one of the few fans that have defended him in the past few years, but at some point this season the lights went out and Elvis left the building. He calls out his better players, assembles horrible lines, mismanages his special teams, and overuses the players with the biggest deficiencies (the last four years have basically been a Sisyphean exercise to jump-start Petr Nedved). And now, when his defensemen were dropping like flies and his goalie was uncontrollably weeping before, during and after each game, he pulls off a deal for the most one-dimensional player in the league. Last night's loss was the tip of the iceberg. At some point Gary Bettman should step in and freeze the Rangers assets.

Welcome to the last days of the Glen Sather Era on New York. His team has clearly quit on him, they can't catch a break with injuries, the media is killing him, the fans are ready to revolt, and Isiah Thomas has completely rejuvinated the Knicks in two weeks. It's unconscionable that this team cannot make the playoffs in seven years. "It is not acceptable for this team not to make the playoffs." That's a direct Glen Sather quote -- from four years ago when he first took the general manager's position. The more things change... Welcome to the New York Rangers. Hockey is different here.

my brother had this suggestion:

what they should have done is round up Pavel Bure, cut off his head and attach it to Lindros' body... then take Kovalev and Juice him in a blender, and feed that to the Bure/lindros master blaster until he's 100% healthy. You could probably do that for a hell of a lot less than 55 million...

Posted by: steve h. on January 26, 2004 01:04 PM

my brother had this suggestion:

Posted by: steve h. on January 26, 2004 01:05 PM