One the bright side, I suppose losing 6-1 is an improvement over losing 9-2, although this one was at home where the Rangers are an awful 7-6, and was against their division rivals who are chasing them for first place. So it was probably even worse.
The Rangers were missing a pair of important players, though - Cullen chews up a lot of time on the 2nd line and Nylander, well, let's just hope the Rangers do sign him to a decent extension as has been recently reported because if Jagr is the engine in the Blueshirts' offense, Nyalnder is the steering wheel. The guy is a key component second only to JJ as far as how this team performs offensively.
Weekes got the start after Lundqvist laid an egg in Toronto last night, and Kevin didn't play well, either. Let's talk about Tom Renney for a minute here, too. Both goalies were going very well. Just about EVERYONE in Rangerland looked at the Rangers previous four games and sensibly pegged the goalie rotation as Weekes @ FLA, Lundqvist @ DAL, Weekes @ TOR and Lundqvist vs. NJ. But for some bizarre reason Renney went against common sense and put Henrik in last night, even though Weekes has owned his hometown team in his career and Henrik was likely slated to play today, anyway. And then Tom pulls out the rebuilding card to the press after last night's loss (see Leeds below), which is a heaping pile of crap. Hasn't been a good 24 hours for anyone around the Rangers.
And now they have the Isles coming up on Tuesday. A loss there would make one ugly trifecta, wouldn't it?
And just to made you feel even worse, at least years ago at the end of a trouncing from a divisional rival we'd likely see a whole lot of chippiness and scrums and fights and emotion. Not in today's No Hitting League. Losses to division rivals end with all the fury and emotion of an old man falling asleep in his La-Z-Boy while watching Murder She Wrote reruns.
- Rocha
Posted by Pete at December 17, 2006 09:37 PMeMail this entry!
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