The Rants Of One Ranger Blogger

November 21, 2009   ·   Derek Felix   ·   Jump to comments

As promised, we ranted about the latest Ranger debacle. A disturbing 3-2 loss at MSG to Florida. After Vinny Prospal opened the scoring by beating Tomas Vokoun five-hole, the Panthers responded with three straight coming from Steve Reinprecht (backhand off dreadful coverage by Kotalik), Jordan Leopold (fluky backhand that surprised Henrik) and Nathan Horton (off a Gaborik turnover).

Typically, The Big Ticket even on an off night notched the other goal. His 16th from Michal Rozsival and Prospal to make things interesting. Like Groundhog Day, nobody else finished despite yeoman work from standouts Sean Avery, Artem Anisimov, Ryan Callahan and P.A. Parenteau. In the end, it wasn’t enough as they couldn’t get it tied late, earning jeers from a flustered crowd that’s seen this team drop five of six, falling to a mediocre 11-10-1. After a hot start, the offense has dried up which probably ain’t helped by no Drury or Dubinsky. However, that’s a poor excuse. Especially when you play a team that was in its third game in four.

This Prospal quote sums up the Ranger struggles:

“There should have been more urgency because it wasn’t getting it done until that point – with five minutes left in the second period.  They scored kind of a fluky goal to go up 2-1.  Then all of a sudden it looked like, for some reason, we relaxed a little bit..”

What exactly does that say about the coach? We get that this team doesn’t have a ton of skill and also is in a rebuilding year with the development of young pups DZ, Gilroy, Artie vital to the club’s future. However, there’s enough experience to give better effort. Marc Staal is a big piece to the puzzle and is clearly struggling in Year 3. He and Dan Girardi had miserable nights as did a handful. Isn’t it time Tort switched the D pairings? We think so!

Rather than further recap what evolved into a 60-minute show with half spent on the Blueshirts while the second part featured the Islanders, Sabres, Devils and a little league stuff, the archive is finally up. Please feel free to check it out. FYI…we’ll be doing some more NYHR including a show this Tuesday between 9 and 10. We’ll keep ya posted. You can also follow us on Twitter.

NYHR: The Rants Of One Ranger Blogger