Leaving Henrik Out to Dry
by Mark Owens The Rangers are making an annual event out of blowing four-goal leads. Last season’s meltdown in Montreal was brutal, but it was a road game in one of the most intimidating buildings in the NHL. Wednesday night’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Capitals was more troubling. The Rangers hadn’t blown a four-goal […]
Hank and Team Defense Carrying the Team
by Mark Owens Only three NHL defensemen have a worse plus/minus than Dmitri Kalinin. At -10, Kalinin leads the team in this category. He also seems to bring the worst out of whichever defenseman he is paired with. Aside from Sunday’s team-wide malfunction, is it any surprise that Michal Rozsival‘s play improved immensely once he was reunited […]
Valliquette Backstops Shootout Shutout
The Rangers head into Detroit tonight (7:00pm – MSG) with a 6-1-0 record courtesy of Stephen Valiquette and his third NHL career shutout. The Rangers did it tough last night against the Leafs, needing a shootout to get one past Maple Leaf netminder Vesa Toskala and finish the game 1-0. Nikolai Zherdev opened up the scoring and Fredrik Sjostrom scored the game winner in the shootout, while Valiquette stopped two of the […]
Dawes And Prucha On The Outer
The Rangers finished their season last year, loaded with draft picks and prospects that they had developed. Lauri Korpikoski made his NHL debut in the final game, and joined Petr Prucha, Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky, Nigel Dawes, Fedor Tyutin, Marc Staal, Ryan Hollweg and Henrik Lundqvist on a team that featured nine Rangers’ draft picks, and a tenth player (Dan Girardi). Over the summer, Glen Sather took the opportunity […]
A Season Of Change
Well I’m finally back from a long summer that finished up with a two week trip to Europe and the back to back games in Prague. I certainly apologize for not having everything ready to go for the start of the season, but as you can imagine there are things in life that sometimes take […]
Some Things Never Change
by Mark Owens Let’s get one thing out of the way: Chris Drury will be the second-best captain the Rangers have had in the past 30 years. He is more than ready to lead this team, especially with seven new players and legends Jaromir Jagr and Brendan Shanahan out of the picture. The team’s average age is now 26, down from […]
Turnover, Speed, and Leadership Void
by Mark Owens Chris Drury and Scott Gomez, along with Henrik Lundqvist, take over as the team’s leaders. Jagr’s offensive production ‘ hopefully ‘ will be replaced by the speedy, enigmatic, underachieving, high first-round pick Nikolai Zherdev (sounds a little like Alex Kovalev, doesn’t it?). Replacing Shanahan’s 23 goals, theoretically, will be Markus Naslund, whose production the past two seasons has […]
The New Squad
by Pete Robinson Out with the old and in with the new. Thus ends the Jagr Era of the New York Rangers. Even though it was short, Captain Jagr will definitely be missed by all. Whether you loved him or hated him, Jaromir Jagr was a main contributor to the rebuilding of the Rangers, as well as […]
Pennywise And Pound Foolish
Going into today’s annual free agency period, I was relatively calm. The Rangers had several key players free to sell their services to the highest bidder, but the Rangers appeared in a relatively decent position cap-wise and had some room to make some deals to improve the team. On top of the wish list was […]
Progress Made, Changes Needed
by Mark Owens Despite bowing out in round two again and perhaps wasting their final season with Hall-of-Famers-to-be Jaromir Jagr and Brendan Shanahan, the Rangers’ season was mostly successful, due to the development of rookies Marc Staal, Brandon Dubinsky, Nigel Dawes and Ryan Callahan. Lauri Korpikoski scored a goal in his NHL debut Sunday, and is one of several rookies with a chance to make […]