Tonight was more of the same that Rangers fans saw on
Saturday as a furious comeback would come up short once again in a 3-2
loss. The team would again fail to
really do anything for two periods and it would be another fight that would
seem to spark some life in the game for the club. The full
game recap will go through all that went on in the game, but I want to
focus on some overall thoughts about tonight and what is coming.
Obviously the Rangers need more from Marian Gaborik as now
everyone is starting to clamor about it and he was even benched during the
game, but other players need to step up as well. Artem Anisimov is cold. Chris Drury needs to
shows some signs of life through his hole infested shorts. Those aren’t the only two either as there are
a grand total of eight players with more than two points this month. Only eight guys, one being Henrik Lundqvist,
have managed to score more than one point in nine games. That is ridiculously bad. To make it worse only three guys have managed
to score more than one goal this month and one of them is Wolski who has been
here four games. Overall the team has
scored 13 goals in regulation and overtime and failed to score more than three
times in any game this month, so it is the whole offense that is failing.
In terms of things that went on during and after the game
there were certainly plenty of headlines.
There was Gaborik
being benched and his talking about it afterwards. There was the fracas that broke out during
the second period that ended with Sean
Avery dropping Matt Carle to the ice with a right hand. Finally there was the postgame
with John Tortorella that is becoming must see TV as tonight he struck back
at what he perceived was a question that called into question the effort of his
club during the game.
Beyond the game tonight and all that it entailed there was
my story on how Sean
Avery needs to be unleashed by this coaching staff right now. For whatever reason regardless of how Sean
Avery plays he seems to be stuck in the doghouse with John Tortorella despite
not having hurt the team this season with any overly stupid actions. With that in mind I took a look at his
situation and how to better use him, especially in light of how P.K. Subban
used an Avery-esque approach to mess up the Rangers.
Finally video
of first round pick Dylan McIlrath pummeling Tyler Yaworski in a fight on
Saturday night.
Since I did not recap Saturday the main story was about Fedotenko-Boyle-Prust
has become the Rangers most important line partly because of how they have
played and in part because of the failures and injuries on other lines.
