B R O A D W A Y***B L U E S H I R T S

blech

:mad:

regardless of the point, we have got to stop trying to win games 1-0 .

did anyone show up tonight besides jagr, dubi, and henrik ?


wtf ?

does Rozzsival mean that much to our lineup ?


that shit was weak .

oh and i was positioned over the goalies left shoulder , in sec 417, row A ( on the railing ) .

xavier mcdaniel wrote:

At least he holds himself accountable unlike that other team that occupies the building.

Sean Avery is at the front of the line of people who pin last night's 2-1 overtime loss to Philly on Sean Avery. "I'd say it's more disappointing how it happened," Avery said of the loss. "I make a terrible play in the end and they go down and score. It just wasn't a very good play, that's for sure. We made two mistakes, primarily both by me, and that's the difference in the game." Well, it's true that Avery's cross-ice pass in OT cost the team the winning goal, after his unnecessary icing and his mistaken coverage off the ensuing face-off cost the team the tying goal in the third period.

But is that really why the Rangers lost this game? Only in the most literal, myopic way of looking at a hockey game. When I examine my own play after a game (which I do to try to help myself get better), it doesn't matter if someone else made the critical play to allow a goal, I only care whether I did something that ultimately led to the goal that I could have avoided. I recall once when my defenseman got the puck deep and I cut up the middle looking for a breakaway pass. He tried to hit me but the pass was intercepted and the other team scored. Everyone blamed the defenseman for attempting that risky pass -- I blamed myself for putting him in the position of making that pass.

So don't blame Avery for losing this game -- mistakes will happen in a hockey game, guaranteed. "A 1-0 lead is not enough," said Jaromir Jagr. "Sooner or later somebody is going to make a mistake. That's what happened and they tied the game. We had some chances. There were a lot of scoring chances." Instead, it would be more instructive to identify how the Rangers got into a position where those errors would cost them a third period equalizer and an OT winner. The envelope please -- well, you don't have to be Karnac the Magnificent to know in advance what the answer is. The power play.

The Rangers controlled this game for two periods, despite missing their top point producer, their number one defenseman, and their primary penalty killer. They had good scoring chances and limited the Flyers to very few -- only a dozen shots on goal through the first forty minutes. The defense was there, despite a reliance on crapshoot blueliners like Marek Malik and Christian Backman and Paul Mara playing his first game in a month with a full mask. The goaltending was there when the Flyers did get an odd chance here or there.

What was missing was a power play goal, one lousy stinkin' power play goal. The Rangers had the only three power plays over the first 25 minutes, an accurate reflection of their control of the game. One power play goal gives them a two-goal lead they can successfully protect against a team like the Flyers that cannot win if it scores less than three goals. But the Rangers went 0-for-4 to make it 0-for-16 in the last five games and 1-for-30 in the last nine. And that allowed the Flyers to believe that they were still in the game.

"That's the difference right now," said Avery. "You have to convert your power play chances. We have to turn it around." "The power play's gotta come through for you," said coach Tom Renney. "We sure could have used one tonight. I saw some good push, some move toward the net, some chances. What we didn't do was a middle drive, traffic at the net. We didn't drive hard through the middle and look for the ugly goal." "That's the best the power play has looked in a while," said Chris Drury. "We all know it's not good. Get to the middle and shoot -- get to the middle and shoot! Some nights we do that -- most nights we don't."

Still, despite the disappointment of losing the extra point (as opposed to winning a point with a third period comeback in Philly), the Rangers have no reason to dwell on this loss. This time, they were the injury-riddled team, playing remarkably well without Scott Gomez, Michal Rozsival, and Blair Betts, and the Flyers were as close to full health they are going to get this season. With all of those injuries short term ones, even with reports of Gomez having torn cartilage in his ribs, with Jaromir Jagr playing a dominant puck possession game, and with the power play ultimately being a correctable problem, there is no reason for the Rangers not to press forward in the last few games and into the playoffs.

Predictably, a small number of Ranger fans judged the overtime error as a popularity contest and blamed Malik for it rather than Avery. Listen to Mike Richards, the goal scorer, describe his game winner: "I was going to try and go forehand and try to go upstairs, but he was right there. The defense was right there and I shoveled it in. The puck kind of hopped up on me and just trickled over his pads. A garbage goal, yeah. It wasn't the prettiest or where I wanted to shoot it. We got a little bit lucky."

that first period was like watching paint dry.

are they trying to win 1-0 again ?

whats up with the devils disrespecting gomez like that ?


wtf ?