A long break

After a week on long island and for the holidays I have been able to write, so here it goes for a rangers post. The rangers have not been doing so hot as of recently mostly on the west coast, which I am reduced to using NHL radio instead of actually watching the game. People say it is so much better to be at the games than watching it on TV (which is so true), well it goes the same for TV to the radio. Of the road trip games I was only able to see the Sedin twins in action, so I was unable to catch the Calgary game or the Edmonton game. Which were both disappointing at least to look at the standings and the stat sheet the next day. From the sounds of things the Edmonton game was pretty good for 40 minutes and they did manage a point which is better than nothing but still that is one of the worse teams in the western conference and you need to walk out of there with 2 points. Same with the combination of Calgary and Vancouver, 2 points combined out of these 2 teams would have been acceptable for a team shooting for a playoff spot, but instead no points there and only 1 in Edmonton. Not a strong performance in western canada, in fact there should have been more motivation for the Rangers as the crowd was chanting "Rangers Suck" toward the end of the game in Vancouver, which made me upset so I'm not sure why more effort wasn't shown on the ice but maybe it was because they played the night before.

The fact of the matter is this. This team does have a win now attitude because of who they brought on in the off season. So all this team needs to do is get into the playoffs, and probably more importantly not play the Sens but this team if it hits stride can take on anyone in the East and they know that, so a top seed is not all that important unless they want home ice. What worries me is that they can't do anything against the western conference. They have mustered only 12 goals in 7 games against while pretty much giving up that many to Marian Gaborik in one game; 25 in total. The teams they played however are pretty much the cream of the crop for the most part in the West besides Phoenix (who scored 5 goals) and Edmonton (who put in 3). So you can pass that off as ok we lost but we lost to 1st through 4th of 1 division that are separated by only 4 points. The problem with that is, if and if this team thinks it can win, and it should be able to. In the long run chances are one of these teams will be facing them in the Stanley Cup finals. Against the west they have managed only 2 points in 7 games, and there are no points in the playoffs. You either win or lose and right now the rangers have lost to the west.

Side note Nigel is back and So is Moore to attempt to add a spark to the offense. Straka is out again, and Shanny sat out but not sure if he will be back tommorrow, chances are that is why Moore is up just in case thing. Callahan is going to head to Hartford most likely this time he is actually going to go and not just on paper this time. That should be an interesting experience, if he can start putting some pucks in the net down there maybe him and Dubinsky and Prucha can get rolling and start drawing some attention away from line 1 and 2. Who knows though, the sad thing is what if they could have made Cullen fit and kept that line together that was so good at the end of last year and in the playoffs. It's too late now to think about that, but Dubinsky has played great, so for other than chemistry and line strength for the 3rd line there are no real regrets here.