Before the marathon shootout, before the Marek Malik showstopper, there was a game. "This was not a masterpiece by the New York Rangers at all," coach Tom Renney noted bluntly after all the talk of the shootout was over. "This was brutal in lots of ways." We won't enumerate the many ways in which this game was brutal -- not when Hockey Rodent has already done such a masterful job of it. But just as Renney was willing to address what came before once he was done celebrating the final outcome, so too must we.
The Rangers won a shootout in Florida a couple of weeks ago after Dominic Moore scored from behind the goal line with three seconds left in regulation to send the game into overtime. That helped a lot of people forget a truly forgettable performance against a weak team. On one hand, you can continue to say, good teams find ways to win these kinds of games, and the Rangers have won five straight now and eight of their last ten dating back to that Florida game. You can even start saying that these cardiac kids are starting to build something magical, inevitable.
On the other hand, you got a glimpse last night of what life can be like for the Rangers without Jaromir Jagr -- because they played this game pretty much without getting anything from Jagr, and therefore from those who rely on him the most. And you got more than a glimpse of what could happen to these Rangers if they forget who they are. Jagr has the pre-season prediction taped in his locker that forecast a 30th place finish for the Rangers in the NHL. When the Rangers opened up in Philly, they looked for all the world like they were going to fulfill that prognostication. But then they rose up and smote the mighty Flyers, and lot of other teams they supposedly had no business being on the same ice with.
However... the Rangers have played the three worst teams in the Conference twice apiece, have suffered two of their seven losses against those teams, and came close to losing two others before pulling them out in shootouts (last night's game and that Florida game). What happened in those game is instructive. Last night, despite being outshot 5-0 over the first ten minutes of the game and 17-4 in the first period, the Rangers actually had a significant territorial edge over their opponents.
But they didn't use their edge, built on superior skill, to their advantage, choosing instead to try to force plays up the middle in all three zone right through Washington, as if the Caps weren't sitting back daring them to do exactly that so that they could counterattack and counterattack. Which is exactly what the Caps did, eventually coming to believe that they had a chance to win this game, even down 2-0.
As fortunate as the Rangers were to have a 2-0 lead in the opening seconds of the second period (and unable to extend it to 3-0 moments later when Tom Poti could not get the handle with an open net in front of him), the Rangers still hadn't learned their lesson and continued to play "brutal in a lot of ways," letting the Caps tie things up. And both Cap goals came for want of a body check, a single solitary body check. Heck, even just a good backcheck. But the lack of hitting almost caused the Rangers to lose this game. One hit on anyone during the sequence that led to the Caps' first goal, and the attack would have been defused. Instead, it took the marathon shootout to get the two points.
The Rangers have to look at those predictions in Jagr's locker before each game and remember that they have to play better than their best every game in order to win, no matter who the opponent might be.
Of course, it doesn't help when the officiating is so atrociously one-sided that your centers can't even take a draw without getting kicked out of the faceoff circle. It happened so often to the Rangers that when a Cap finally got tossed late in the game, the crowd gave the linesman a derisive cheer. Far worse were the referees. Matt Bradley reached around Maxim Kondratiev, put his sticks between his legs, and twisted him down dangerously into the end boards, all in open ice no more than fifteen feet from Bill McCreary, who was watching the play, and there was no call. Blair Betts slid headfirst into the goal post, missing Kolzig, and had his head ground into the ice by Kolzig after the Cap goalie jumped on top of him, with Blaine Angus standing right over them, and there was no call.
But Petr Prucha has his stick lifted by a Cap into the face of a Cap, and he gets high sticking? Dominic Moore reaches into a player, yes, and that is a penalty, but he already had his hand off his stick showing the ref that he was doing nothing when the Cap visibly throws his feet out from under himself and goes down, and there is no offsetting diving call? Martin Straka taps a guy harmlessly across the shin pads, yes, maybe that's a penalty in the new NHL, but the guy goes off the diving board with a perfect ten, and no call?
JD, calling the game for MSGN, was right that the call on Prucha was a mistake by Angus, but he was wrong that Prucha's stick never hit the guy -- it was his stick, just not his fault. JD was also wrong about Ovechkin's trip on Ortmeyer on the shorthanded breakaway. Doesn't matter if you get the puck or not -- you're still not allowed to trip a guy. And it doesn't matter if you trip him with your shoulder or butt instead of the usual stick or leg -- if you take a guy's legs out under any circumstances, it's tripping. No point arguing about getting the puck first -- we've all seen refs call tripping on guys who got the puck first. It may be a useful guideline, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Ovechkin dove into Ortmeyer's path and tripped him on a breakaway -- should have been a penalty shot.
Curiously, the Rangers played most of the game with a Czech line (Jagr, Prucha, Straka), a non-Czech line (Sweden's Nylander, Finland's Nieminen, Slovakia's Hossa), and two checking lines made up entirely of North Americans (Moore, Ortmeyer, Hollweg and Betts, Ward, Strudwick). Hossa didn't play much in the third period, with Strudwick dropping back to defense to replace Poti, Nylander rejoining Jagr and Straka, and Prucha rejoining Betts and Ward. Hossa had three shifts total in the third, none past the 12:00 minute mark or in overtime, and his shootout attempt was downright feeble. Time to address that situation.
Game reports focusing mostly on the shootout from the Star-Ledger, Journal News, Post, Times, News, and Newsday. Ira Podell of the AP on the two OT thrillers at the Garden yesterday (the Knicks won on last second heroics too in the matinee). Additional game notes from the Star-Ledger, and a story on Chris Holt from Newsday. Hartford's win in the Courant, the Checkers' loss in the Observer.
For a bit of controversy, check out SI.com's trophy nominees for the first quarter, where Lundqvist doesn't make the top three rookies (though he does make the list of Vezina candidates), and where Jaromir Jagr is not a Hart candidate, even though two of the other three -- Heatley and Forsberg -- are part of a strong cast of characters, while Jagr and Staal, the third candidate, are truly carrying their teams beyond all expectations pretty much on their own, offensively at least. Renney appears, deservedly so, among the three Adams candidates for coach of the year, the writer giving him even more credit for the Rangers' turnaround than Jagr and Lundqvist.