Most of the day was spent on the Erik Christensen comments about Sean Avery’s role in the brawl during the Rangers game vs Edmonton. As I said in the post whether you agree with what Avery did or not you cannot as a teammate discuss that in public instead it must be done face to face behind the locker room doors. What ended up for me in the scenario is you have a player who calls out his teammate claiming a sucker punch and in doing it how he did he ended up sucker punching Avery himself. I am not a huge Avery guy myself, but when you are a guy like Christensen who is seen as soft and up and down in his own play he will win no fans by going after a guy who many Rangers fans already have their guard up to protect from anyone. If it was someone like Callahan who said it or if the person Christensen was talking about was someone less liked by the fans like Rozsival then maybe the reaction might be different but for many now Christensen is enemy number 1.
In the afternoon I put up the pregame for the night’s tilt in Pittsburgh and later a final lineup which had Henrik Lundqvist returning, Derek Boogaard Scratched and Steve Eminger getting some time with Marc Staal while Dan Girardi being put back with Michael Del Zotto.
During the actual game the news was reported by Andrew Gross in a follow-up to prior news on Dylan McIlrath’s knee injury that the 2010 1st round pick would be heading to New York to get an MRI and evaluation. I do not want to jump the gun, but the longer it takes to hear news on the severity of the injury the more I personally get worried about how serious it is. Now the move could simply be precautionary on the part of the team in wanting to look at him for themselves and handle his treatment themselves, only time will tell on that.
From the game against the Penguins we had Ryan Callahan throwing down with Mr Hillary Duff while the rest of his team slept through the first period. In other news during the game, Henrik Lundqvist and most notably Brandon Dubinsky would not let the Rangers leave Pittsburgh without the full two points. Henrik kept them alive with a spectacular performance and when it all looked lost Dubinsky took over leading the team to the tying goal in regulation and winner in OT. The Rangers will next be in action Wednesday against the Bruins with their Heritage jerseys on display, but we will be back tomorrow for more coverage.
