Saturday, January 15, 2011

Rangers Fall Short In Montreal, 3-2


For the New York Rangers tonight was a dangerous game when you combine the high of beating Vancouver on Thursday with the awful history they have had of late in Montreal and you just knew something was bound to happen tonight. 
Reality is the Rangers had no business even being in the game after forty minutes, but it was the stellar work and the fight in Henrik Lundqvist that had them with even a chance to just come up short in this one.  After stoning the Canadiens four times one power play Henrik Lundqvist gone run into by Max Pacioretty and after all the time he had been run coupled with the frustration of the game, Lundqvist snapped.  Henrik went all Ron Hextall on Pacioretty jumping on top of him and smashing him in the face with his blocker (video).
The team finally showed some life after that went on with 2:20 remaining in the second and played an excellent last 20 minutes, but it was too little too late in the grand scheme.  A goal by Mats Zuccarello made it 3-2 and they had chances late to tie, but could not get all the way back.  
Now for what went wrong before that point.  After playing a decent first 12 minutes that saw the Rangers get the only goal of the game to that point the wheels would fall off thanks to awful penalties.  The Rangers scored 6:58 into the game when a hardworking shift by Fedotenko, Boyle and Prust ended with Brian Boyle jamming the puck through Carey Price to make it 1-0.
The point where the game fell apart for the Rangers was 12:10 into the first when Brandon Dubinsky let P.K. Subban get too far into his head and took an awful penalty after the whistle.  On the ensuing power play Roman Hamrlik would drive one from the point off Dan Girardi and in at 13:19.
Following that Michael Sauer took a bad penalty on Scott Gomez at 14:02 which would see the Canadiens capitalize again this time from Tomas Plekanec at the side of the net off a feed from James Wisniewski to make it 2-1 Habs 14:50 into the first.
The final goal in the trio came at 16:03 when Andrei Kostitsyn following a faceoff win by the Rangers but a turnover where Kostitsyn ended up wide open in the slot for a slapper and in 2:44 it went from 1-0 Rangers to 3-1 Montreal.
  • The only guys who showed up for the entire game were Boyle, Prust, Fedotenko, Newbury, Avery, Lundqvist
  • Dubinsky was awful tonight and selfish to boot
  • Gaborik excuses must end now
  • Wolski was invisible as well
  • On bright side as bad as they were for half the game they were inches away from tying it up