Canucks 2, Rangers 1.
Click here for the boxscore with links to the game summary, etc.
Thoughts:
1) First things first. This is where it catches up to the Rangers. For so long they got away with sloppy, or uneven, or incomplete games and won. Now the worm turns. The Rangers actually played one of their better start-to-finish games last night, gave it a pretty damn good effort, did a bunch of things on their checklist. And lost. Stuff evens out. If they won that game 2-1, with the way they played, instead of losing it 2-1, you’d be starting to cut the confetti and thinking about sweeping this road trip.
2) Not that they didn’t do enough to lose it. They sure did that, too, starting with the top six who again, with all the offensive zone time they had, and with all the hard work the entire roster did defensively, just refusing to put pucks on goal the way the bottom six did, the way Vancouver’s fourth line did. Nope. Got to stick with the fancy-boy passes against a questionable defensive team. Because once every five games it works like it did vs. Ottawa.
3) Honestly – and you can point fingers at Derick Brassard, Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello (been awful for a while, with one goal, no assists in his last nine games), Kevin Hayes and Chris Kreider (been awful most of the season) – the fancy-boy Rangers have seven even-strength goals in six games, and that includes a penalty shot and an empty-netter. Again, just as they’ve battened down the defense, they sprung a leak on offense. And it’s the fault of the top guys.
4) Now, the game was still sitting there for them to win, and one might have been enough had we not gotten the Bizzaro Third Period. Just crazy, stupid stuff.
5) Let’s break it down, shall we? Dominic Moore calf-roped one of the Sedins (I can’t tell them apart). That’s a penalty in today’s pansified NHL. It is. You know it, I know it, Dom Moore should know it. If there is one call that our fine, fine officials usually get right, and call most of the time, that’s it.
6) OK, so power play Vancouver. Jarret Stoll falls on top of the puck and covers it. I mean, he really makes an effort to cover it, whether it was with his hand or not. That doesn’t matter. It’s the correct call by the letter of the rule. Especially if the officials told him to move the puck and he didn’t. That’s a delay of game. Though while I defend it as correct, they rarely call it, and you can take it to the bank that tomorrow or the next day the same situation will arise and it won’t be called a penalty. Book that.
7) Here’s it is: Delaying the Game. A player or a team may be penalized when, in the opinion of the Referee, is delaying the game in any manner. (Rule) 63.2: Minor Penalty – A minor penalty shall be imposed on any player, including the goalkeeper, who holds, freezes or plays the puck with his stick, skates or body in such a manner as to deliberately cause a stoppage of play. With regard to a goalkeeper, this rule applies outside of his goal crease area.
8) Of course, our fine, fine, fine NHL officials were all over that call, but none of them took note of Alex Burrows using that opportunity to just rake the back of Stoll’s head while he was down on the ice, just because, well, he was down on the ice and his head was begging to be raked.
9) Anyway, you all knew what was then coming. The 5-on-3 goal. Alex Edler, through Dan Girardi’s screen, from the Sedins, who to that point hadn’t broken a sweat and were being outplayed by J.T. Miller, Moore and Jesper Fast.
10) I don’t blame him, but Alain Vigneault kind of lost his discipline, too, tacking on another penalty with his mocking of the officials. Though on the game sheet the penalty officially was given to Kreider. Honestly, our fine, fine, fine NHL officials sure do have some thin, thin, thin skin and rabbit ears lately. My goodness. Do they really need to make that call? Then Ryan McDonagh took one for roughing up Burrows (who separated his shoulder two seasons back). Then Burrows couldn’t resist a cheap shot and got called, too. Just a nutty sequence, that was topped by a questionable penalty shot awarded to the Rangers, on which Dan Boyle scored the tying goal.
11) OK, so it’s 1-1, the Rangers dodged a bullet, were still the far better team at even strength, and 30 seconds later they have their one colossal breakdown. It started with what the Rangers felt was a bad faceoff by our fine, fine, fine NHL officials. Kreider and Nash were apparently trying to switch wings and they dropped the puck. So be it. Nash had a chance to get the puck up the wall and backed up, a very weak effort, lost the puck. Girardi went for a walk up the slot, chasing the puck. Oscar Lindberg saw one of the Sedins (I can’t tell them apart) at the side of the net and drifted away from him. Lundqvist had to sell out to the shot to some degree, leaving one of the Sedins (I don’t know which one) to make a great redirection for the winning goal.
12) During all the madness was the frightening injury to Dan Hamhuis, hit square in the mug with a shot by Boyle. He spent the night in a hospital, lost some teeth, and probably broke his jaw. Ugh. Could have been worse. Looked horrible.
13) Oh, and to make it a little more bizarre, Vigneault challenged the winning goal for goalie interference, even though there wasn’t a chance in hell it would be overturned. I guess that late in the game, you give it a shot, hope the referee sees something on his tiny iPad. But there was nothing there. Even Lundqvist said so. I didn’t think so even before the first replay. It’s worth a flier. It’s not like AV uses his timeouts anyway.
14) Burrows had about five penalties, two of them called. He ran the goalie (so did Derek Dorsett). Play on, of course. It really is amazing that the referees know exactly who the cheap-shot artists are, know exactly what they do, game in and game out, and let them continually get away with it. It’s almost like you’re punished for not having enough cheap-shot artists on your roster.
15) The Rangers started out again with the same formula they employed vs. Ottawa and the Islanders – and one they often have used with all their road-game success in the past – defend first, forecheck second. They had the puck a lot early. Wait, is that Corsi? But often they refused to shoot it. As usual. Keep on passing that biscuit. Fancy boys. Could have taken the game early on and just let the Canucks hang in there to the point where it’s 0-0 in the third and now it’s anybody’s game. So in that regard, they got what they deserved even though they were the far better team at even strength for 60 minutes.
16) Former (briefly) Vancouver coach John Tortorella must be smiling the way the Canucks blocked shots. Oh, I forgot. He doesn’t smile.
17) Dylan McIlrath was fine, again, but he got roasted by Dorsett, and bailed out by Lundqvist in the first. McIlrath fired a few more slappers toward the net – he has to shoot when he’s out there with Keith Yandle, Brassard, Hayes and Zuccarello, as he often was, because the other guys won’t. It’s like a game of keepaway. One of these days one of those McIlrath bombs is going to go in and it will break the blog.
18) These late starts stink. I can’t wait for the future when you can DVR a game and watch it EARLIER.
19) The call on McDonagh late in the first? Pansification. But that time the Rangers were very lucky to not be facing two-minute 5-on-3 when Viktor Stalberg hooked down one of the Sedins. (I don’t know which one).
20) They killed the end of McDonagh’s penalty at the start of the second, then Lindberg pops wide open in slot and is stopped by Ryan Miller.
21) On their first PP, a cough-up by Yandle resulted in Lindberg taking a penalty on Higgins, who faked Lundqvist out of the net and had an open side for a wrap-around denied by J.T. Miller. Then during the 4-on-4, Girardi tipped McDonagh’s shot off the crossbar. So they had chances to win this one.
22) The Rangers’ power play (which has been so good for a month or more now) in the second must have looked up and seen Perry Pearn on the Vancouver bench
23) Ryan Miller=overrated, IMO.
24) Whenever I hear the name Vrbata, I think of that former clown Varada in Buffalo, the ultimate cheap-shot artist. I remember one game was one-sided up there, and the Rangers weren’t going anywhere in those days, so Rich Pilon just jumped him and beat the living crap out of him. His teammates loved it.
25) I’m kind of glad the Canucks won so they wouldn’t be rioting all night in downtown Vancouver. Or do they riot when they win? I forget.
26) Glen Sather is being honored by the city of Edmonton today. Then the big night Friday. Whatever you think of him, it’s going to be pretty cool seeing the reunion of the greatest collection of hockey players ever assembled. But I don’t recall MSG Network making a big deal of it when Edmonton raised Wayne Gretzky’s or Mark Messier’s banners.
27) Countdown to Festivus: 13 days.
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My Three Rangers Stars:
1. Henrik Lundqvist.
2. J.T. Miller.
3. Dan Boyle.
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Your poll vote for Three Rangers Stars:
1. Henrik Lundqvist.
2. Dan Boyle.
3. Dylan McIlrath.
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