Saturday, December 4, 2010

Daily Recap: Kreider Heating Up; Cally Not Punished; Drury, Prospal Updates; McIlrath Fight; Thomas Save

This morning I looked at the play of Chris Kreider and how his pattern of play over the past two years reminds me of another New York pro athlete.  The pattern also shows that Kreider is about to break out in a huge way and that has already begun as tonight he would score a beautiful shorthanded goal against the rival Boston University Terriers and would have 2G, 2A in the two game series to bump his season numbers to 5G 6A in 16 games.  The full article on Kreider, how his slow start does not mean something is wrong and who the other New York player is can all be found here.

Following that today there was a pair of reports that stemmed from filings on the team and today’s practice.  The first focused on the two guys who have missed virtually the entire season with their injuries; Chris Drury and Vinny Prospal.  Inside the article that can be found here there is an update on Drury and what he is currently able and not able to do along with a timetable on his return.  Also where Prospal is concerned he has taken another step forward in his recovery but is not close to a recovery.

In the other there was the discussion of the NHL decision to take no suspension on Ryan Callahan for the elbow hit on Frans Nielsen in Friday’s game along with the fact that Brandon Prust was sat from practice with a sore shoulder.  Find out my thoughts on the Cally decision, if Prust is going to play tomorrow and what he should be doing less of to stay healthy by clicking here.

Rangers 2010 1st round pick Dylan McIlrath returned to the lineup Friday and wasted little time getting back into the fighting spirit by dropping the gloves in an excellent scrap during the first period.  To watch the video from the fight and read more discussion on Dylan’s injury and play follow the link here.

In what I expected to be my last post of the evening other than this recap I took a look at the Rangers matchup with the Ottawa Senators tomorrow night at 5.  This will be the second Heritage night game on the schedule and for those who do not know the Heritage schedule it is listed here.  As for the game itself the Rangers need to take care of business against an inferior opponent who is coming off a game tonight that they lost in a shootout.  The Senators are 2-7-1 in their last 10 so the Rangers should beat them but they should not underestimate them.  For a look at the lines, my keys to the game and prediction on the outcome check out the full pregame here.

I said I thought the pregame was going to be the last article of the night and technically it was, but even as a Rangers fan I was compelled to put up the video of Tim Thomas robbing Francois Beauchemin in OT for the Boston Bruins tonight.  To me the save will likely be the save of the year and if it is not then someone made a whopper.  Check out the video of the brilliant save here.

Once again want to give a shout to Dig Deep for making his original banner for the site even better; phenomenal work.