Habsolutely Brutal

Last night the New York Rangers (30-24-8) blew a five goal lead and lost to the Montreal Canadiens (33-19-9) by a score of 6-5 in a shootout. Michael Ryder and Alex Kovalev each scored twice and Montreal rallied from five goals down to beat the New York Rangers 6-5 in a shootout Tuesday night. Saku Koivu beat Henrik Lundqvist with a forehand deke on the Canadiens' second shootout attempt and Cristobal Huet stopped Brendan Shanahan, Chris Drury and Jaromir Jagr to the delight of the sold-out Bell Centre crowd of 21,273. The Canadiens, who celebrate their centennial in 2009, stormed back from a 5-0 deficit early in the second with five unanswered goals. Brandon Dubinsky and Sean Avery scored goals 14 seconds apart in the first, and Drury scored his 20th goal 28 seconds after Shanahan's second goal of the game to give New York a five-goal lead 5:03 into the second. Shanahan scored New York's third goal of the first period and the first of two power-play goals 28 seconds apart by the Rangers early in the second to extend the streak that he began in 1988-89 with 22 goals in his second season with New Jersey. For a full recap go to Yahoo! Sports.

...I made a decision last night after that brutal loss not to come on the blog because I knew I would be blogging on pure emotion. So I went to sleep, woke up and now I can blog with a clear head.

...while that's as bad of a loss as you'll see, you can't get to crazy about it. Its still only February, we did get a point and the team has now gone 3-0-2 in their last five games. Brendan Shanahan had some great quotes after the game (see here), where he says that he's not worried about the loss because blowing leads hasn't been a pattern for the team this year (as it was last year) and that they just have to chalk it up as one of those crazy games. Every team has one of these just brutal losses during the season and this was ours. They just need to move on and get ready for another important game against Buffalo on Saturday.

...now you can't make history by blowing a 5-0 lead and not be criticized. For me the blame goes to Renney and Lundqvist. First Renney, I've got to question the game plan after going up 5-0. I can't stand when NHL teams go into the prevent defense. Dump the puck, sustain no offense and hope to hang on. Well when you're playing a team as offensively talented as the Canadiens that's just not going to work. When you have a team down, you've got to put your foot on their throat, not let them off the canvas. Now to Lundqvist. This guy hasn't stepped up for us since November. Sure he's had some good games, but when was the last time you said wow he won us that game tonight. In my game preview I said that Lundqvist might need to steal this one for us tonight. Well he didn't need to steal one for us, he needed to save us and he didn't. He's the highest paid goalie in the league. Make the big save for us please. No way Luongo or Brodeur let in the third or fifth goals.

...now to the positives, as there were many. I think I officially have a man crush on Dubinsky. A Gordie Howe hat trick in the first period. Great job. Another guy on a tear is Drury. He has eight goals in the last ten games. He now has 20 on the season and should be on pace for 27-30 goals this year. Right about what we should have expected from him coming into the season. Lastly, in the three games since his two week rest Shanahan has three goals and one assist. Having a reenergized Shanahan down the stretch is going to be crutial.

...to put salt in the wound, while the Rangers were up 5-0, the Penguins were losing 2-0 to Florida and Philadelphia was down 2-0 to Ottawa. At the end of the night, we lose, Pittsburgh comes back to win and Philly fights back to force overtime and lose in a shoot out. In another important game, Boston, blew a two goal lead to Carolina, but won in OT. Not only giving them two important points, but Carolina got a point also. So on a night it looked like we were going to gain two points on everyone we actually lose ground to Ottawa, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Boston. However, we're still in sixth place.