Friday, April 25, 2008

No Excuses


Tonight the New York Rangers lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins by a score of 5-4 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Final match-up. For a full recap go to newyorkrangers.com.

...ok, instead of being a total hypocrite and whine, ala Crosby, about the awful call on Straka I've decided to take a deep breath (very deep) and move on.

...to me, the Rangers should have never been in that position in the first place. When you have a team down 3-0 you can't let them back into it. And the way they got back into it was an absolutely horrendous give away by Rozsival who then promply deflected the puck into his own net. That play in my opinion was much bigger than the bogus call on Straka. It gave the Penguins life and 14 seconds later they were back in the game.

...the defense tonight was bad. Penguin players were wide open in front of Lundqvist all night. With the exception of Staal and Mara the other four defensmen all had tough plays that led directly to goals. I've already gone over Rozsvial's gaffe, then Tyutin and Girardi couldn't have played Sykora's goal any worse and Backman got his pocket picked by Crosby behind the net leading to Dupuis goal. Renney's got to get these guys straighted out.

...now having said all that I still love our chances to win the series. I mean how bad was Fluery tonight. If we had any type of pressure on him after Avery's goal we would have run away with this game. We need to throw as much rubber at him as possible the rest of the series. Another reason for confidence is that three of the Penguins five goals were deflected in so luck wasn't on our side tonight either.

...one thing this team does is comeback from tough losses. The Montreal debacle actually spring boarded this team into their late season run, so I have no concerns that this game will haunt them throughout the series. I look for them to bounce back with a great effort on Sunday and get this series tied up going back to the Garden.

...man that was a bad call. Sorry I couldn't resist.

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