Sean Avery crashing, much like the Rangers have been doing recently.
Do they even have one? They seem like a team that’s had a hard time finding who they really are. They went from a team that looked like they were Stanley Cup bound in the beginning of the season, to wallowing at .500 alongside another New York team, the dreaded arch-rival Islanders.
What have the Rangers shown us through the first few weeks of the season? Well, the first thing they showed us this year was that they were going to score more goals. Yeah, maybe not so much, as a matter of a fact, Marian Gaborik has made up for 85% of the Rangers offense this year. If you factor in that Gaborik has horrible playoff numbers, traditionally, and he’s not in a better situation in New York than he was in Minnesota, it’s starting to become a bit ridiculous.
Why not compare the Rangers to the Islanders this year, since they’re so even in the standings and all, it seems like a fair comparison. The Rangers are a team that hardly gets secondary scoring, and genuinely roll over and die in the middle of the game. This slide has been happening since the loss to the Islanders back in October. The Rangers don’t seem to have any desire to play harder than their opponents. It’s almost as if the loss of Brandon Dubinsky has just sucked the life out of them, there’s hardly ANY work ethic. Chris Drury giving an interview last night sounded like a player who just got beat and had his nose rubbed in it. The penalty kill has been the Rangers one saving grace this year. They need to find a way to build around the momentum they have during the PK. They play with more desperation and look like an actual team when killing penalties, but 5-on-5 or on the man advantage, they look pathetic, aside from Gabby, of course.
Their cross town rivals have an identity, everyone knows they’re a team in transition, but they take their style of hockey back to the basics. The Islanders play blue collar hockey that’s actually entertaining to watch. The Rangers, at times, look like an offensive team playing the trap, and others looking like a trap team playing offensively and being caught out of position. John Tortorella was supposed to be the guy to turn the team around, but they’re right back to where they were with Tom Renney. The only difference now, is they have the top goal scorer in the league, whereas last year, they hardly had one guy cracking the top 50.
So after three losses in a row, the Rangers have to go back to the drawing boards. Maybe they need to play a team like Toronto to get their mojo back, but the Rangers have NOT been playing good hockey, regardless of what MSG commentators want to say.
