Don't look now, but Madison Square Garden is slowly becoming an intimidating place to play, and it hasn't been that way for years. Last night a sparse Monday night crowd was as loud as anything for the last 45 minutes of the game, even extending several standing ovations to the New York Rangers.
As for the team, they played what was virtually a perfect game. Facing one of the most solid goaltenders in hockey, Roberto Luongo, the Rangers peppered the Panthers with 49 shots, scoring on four of them. Meanwhile, they gave up only 23 shots, and as you know by now, none of them got past Henrik Lundqvist, who earned his first career NHL shutout. (That would be 2 in a row if not for a fluke goal off of Darius Kasparaitis' skate the other night.)
Honestly, I can't think of one criticism for any of the players. They were all disciplined, hard working, and intelligent on the ice. Tom Renney is showing signs of genius as well, calling a timeout to rest Jagr's unit for a 5-on-3 power play, and then putting five forwards on the ice for that two-man advantage. That strategy resulted in two consecutive Jagr goals utilizing the same exact play. Fedor Tyutin started us off with a power play goal, and Petr Prucha topped the scoring off with his first career NHL goal.
Most of the beat writers focus on the Rangers power play:
NY Post: Larry Brooks talks about the PP, as well as the response of the crowd. Larry is also the only one of the writers to address the problem Pete Rocha mentioned yesterday regarding Cablevision, the NHL, and OLN:
"It's early, no question about that, and the Rangers and the season are very much in the embryonic stage of development, but this much is clear — this is the Peoples' Team.
All the more shameful, then, that the NHL continued to abdicate its responsibility and contractual right to direct the Outdoor Life Network not to black out Cablevision subscribers on exclusive telecasts. Shame on the league for depriving Rangers fans who have scratched a seven-year itch until it bleeds of the ability to watch last night's match."
We will address this OLN issue later today.
NY Daily News: John Dellapina has two articles, one dealing with Lundqvist's first shutout, the other with the overall game.
The Journal News: Andrew Gross on Jagr and the power play.
The Star Ledger: Colin Stephenson with more of the same.
NY Times: Jason Diamos points out that the Rangers are long on success in this young season, but short on name players, a direct contrast to years past.
Newsday: Steve Zipay gives us the fifth headline today with the word "power" in it.
The Rodent has the Prucha-Watch on. He is only 893 goals shy of Gretzky's record.
The guys at Blueshirt Bulletin cover last night's game. They point out that there were several scouts in the stands, and only a few of them were upcoming opponents of the Rangers, implying that the rest were there to look at players for a possible trade. Jamie Lundmark was scratched again, so that leaves only a few candidates who might be on the block. Use your imagination......it isn't that hard to figure out.
Bird was a guest on the NY Hockey Report.
We are looking forward to tomorrow's game against the Isles. The Garden will be R-O-C-K-I-N-G.
HDH
Posted by Jim at October 18, 2005 11:09 AMeMail this entry!
|
Recent Articles
|
|
|