Takin' a T/O With BT: With The New York Rangers, It's Just a Game Of Numbers

The New York Rangers were without super-pest Sean Avery, while the Pittsburgh Penguins had their grittiest veteran, Gary Roberts, return to the lineup.

Despite the additions to the series-leading Penguins and subtractions from the Rangers, the result—a 3-0 Ranger win—was the exact opposite to what had been happening the entire series.

Apparently no one taught the Rangers how to do simple math: Taking away one from something makes it weaker. So naturally the Rangers, minus one effective super-pest, would be even worse-off in game four than they were their previous three losses right?

Of course not.

Before the playoffs, people thought you couldn't win with Sean Avery. Now the buzz around town was that the Rangers would have a hard time winning without him.

For one game at least, the Rangers found a way. 

For all of the credit that we've given Sean Avery however—the ability the get under the opposing team's skin, the malicious way he baits the opposing superstars to play the game his way, his God-given knack for being able to motivate the players around him and even score some goals while he's at it—the New York Rangers proved that in his absence they had other players who could provide the kind of playoff toughness and spunk you need to win in the playoffs.

It came from strange places too. Players like Paul Mara and Dan Girardi, who always go out there and do their job while tossing the body around seemed to have added a little bit more sandpaper to their game, while Brandon Dubinski seemed to have a little bit more of a jump in his step.

Hell, even Jaromir Jagr was showing off a little bit of that standard playoff toughness (and his horrendous playoff goatee I might add) that he's so often criticized for lacking.

But while some players were trying to prove that the Rangers could be effective without Avery in the lineup, perhaps Jaromir wasn't one of them.

Maybe Jagr wasn't feeling the weight of the void that Avery's loss created.

Maybe Jagr wasn't trying to shoulder the offensive load for the struggling Chris Drury and Scott Gomez either.

Perhaps he could have just been trying to lead by example as he took inspiration from his own words.

See, it was Jagr who said "This could be my last game, so let's make it a good one," and for a player who has consistently shown up for a few games and disappeared for many more, maybe this is just Jagr's way of going the way he's always played—one game up, one game down.

Or maybe, it's the start of something more.

I mean let's just think about this: 

Wouldn't it be wild if Jagr were looking up at the retired numbers at Madison Square Garden during the national anthem, and upon noticing Mark Messier's vaunted eleven hanging from the rafters, thought to himself:

"Maybe. Maybe I can go out with a little more of a bang than I came onto Broadway with. Kind of like the Moose did. That'd be kind of cool..."

Maybe Jagr thought about what it meant to have this possibly be his last game in one of the most historic, glorified buildings in the history of sport.

Maybe it was from that thought that he became infused with a passion for leadership, and the drive to lead this team on against his former club, and come out victorious in an effort to halt the Penguins' sweep.

But what if he doesn't want to stop there? What if Jagr's got big plans? Maybe he's looking to start a comeback almost as historic as the one Messier led the Blue Shirts to almost fifteen years ago.

Or maybe Jagr wanted one more day in the spotlight—which could explain a lot of this series (like the verbal jousting between himself and the Penguins superstar tandem of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby—the two who seemingly replaced him as the "reincarnations" of Mario Lemieux).

Maybe Jagr just wants his name mentioned amongst the greats again. When he was younger, he was skillful, being compared to Mario Lemieux, and being called one of the "greats of his time."

Now, instead of passing the torch, he's dug his heels in and refused to let go—finding a way to bring himself (through controversy) into the forefront of hockey fans' minds once again along with the today's greats (Malkin and Crosby).

But I guess you can't really blame him, can you? Fame seems pretty addictive. 

Whatever it is with Jagr this week, he's earned himself one more game, a few more minutes in the same breath as Crosby and Malkin (albeit through the coincidence of playing together) and one last shot to prove his worth. 

As for the rest of the New York Rangers, for a team that seemed to rely so heavily on Avery's antics in the first round, who would have thought that those same antics would still pay dividends in the second round—just with Avery out of the lineup?

I guess it just goes to prove that math, like many other things, will always be a mystery.

Whether the solution to this equation involves the number seven however, that's up to the Rangers.