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.

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