Will Avery and the Rangers meet Lemieux and the Sharks in the Stanley Cup finals?
With 15 games to go in the regular season, the New York Rangers have to get enough wins to finsih ahead of half the league. They have to stay ahead of the streaking Pittsburgh Penguins, who picked up Kunitz and Bill Guerin to join Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
With the top two points-getters in the NHL, the Penguins are hard to beat, but they appear to be suffering from the Curse of the Runners Up to the Stanley Cup.
The Rangers play Nashville, then Philadelphia, twice, Montreal, Buffalo, Ottawa, Minnesota, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Carolina, Boston, Montreal, and finish by playing Philadelphia twice.
If they finish in eighth place, the position they've held most of the season, they'll play the Boston Bruins, who they just beat 403. If they finish higher, they could meet the New Jersey Devils, the team they swept last year, when The Avery Rule was invoked.
Most people predict the San Jose Sharks will be in the Stanley Cup finals. If the Rangers make it that far, it could be The Battle Of The NHL Villains, as New York and San Jose employ the top two villains in the NHL today in Sean Avery and Claude Lemieux.
Lemieux made a comeback to the NHL this year after retiring and then playing his way back with the China Sharks of the Asian League. Avery made a comeback to the NHL this year after a month of anger management and then playing his way back with the Hartford Wolf Pack of the AHL.
As hockey villains go, Avery is the King of the Agitators, the Superpest, a top ten trash talker, undefeated in 53 NHL fights, and he led the league in penalties for two years with the L.A. Kings, not to mention the 300 PIMS he got one year with the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks while he was breaking into the league with the Red Wings.
Lemiux is a cheap shot artist who ruined the careers of a couple of NHL stars with horrible hits but has played a positive role in Stanley Cup victories with three different teams.
In a series with the Sharks versus the Rangers, I'm afraid the Rangers would ride the shark, as they say in Hollywood.
On the other hand, for the Rangers to survive long enough to play hockey in June, it would mean all their slumping stars would have been sparked into playing to their full potential. They are, after all, a team of captains and first round draft picks.
If the Rangers were getting the best out of all their players, nobody would want to go up against them. Not even Claude Lemieux and the San Jose Sharks.
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