Rangers-Canucks: New York Gets Canucked By Vancouver

The Rangers left Henrik Lundqvist out to dry. And then he did the same to them.

After giving up five goals, he had enough and pulled himself from the game. He couldn’t get out of that nightmare fast enough. Can you blame him? So much for the goaltending matchup of the century between the King and Roberto Luongo. Who knew the best netminder on the ice would be Stephen Valiquette?

The final score was 6-3, but it wasn’t really that close.

This is what the Rangers look like when Lundqvist isn’t there to bail them out. The turnovers are becoming a broken record. The breakdowns and mistakes keep on coming. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the Rangers are on the power play, a forward passes the puck back to the point, the defenseman mishandles said puck, the opponent saunters down the ice and scores.

Last night it was Wade Redden who came down with Michal Rozsival’s disease. But it’s not the defenseman’s fault because a) the puck was bouncing and who would expect a veteran NHL player to control a bouncing puck; b) the ice was choppy because of the skating grizzly bears when the circus was in town last year, and c) Tom Renney wants to defend his defensemen.

The Rangers have now given up a league-leading seven shorthanded goals. They did score two power-play goals, but that only left them at plus-one. And they couldn’t do anything with a four-minute man advantage that spanned the second and third periods.

The Blueshirts started out slow as usual and this time they could never catch up. The Canucks were faster and played harder than New York. Maybe the speedy Vancouver team is just trying to outskate the memory of once having the worst uniforms in the history of professional sports.

The Sedin twins were all over the ice, communicating telepathically (off the ice, they always dress the same and speak in unison just to creep people out).

On Vancouver’s first goal, Kyle Wellwood skated right between Rozsival and Dmitri Kalinin for a breakaway (surprise, surprise).

The second goal was the shorthander by Shane O’Brien (who committed five minor penalties in the game—was there a keg of Guinness in the penalty box he had to get to?).

The third one came on a turnover. The fourth one, turnover.

The fifth was scored on a five-on-three (the Rangers were starting to get back in the game, but decided to take three penalties in a row instead). The sixth was an empty-netter.

The Canucks were swarming around the net and had players wide open in front all game long. Lundqvist never had a chance. He ended up allowing five goals on 16 shots. Valiquette stepped onto the ice in the middle of a five-on-three and stemmed the tide.

At the other end of the ice, Luongo let in three goals, but made a number of spectacular saves, never allowing the Rangers to get too close.

What went wrong in this game for the Rangers? Everything.

They need to stop getting off to slow starts and playing from behind. Miracle comebacks are great, but they’re not going to happen every night. The shorthanded goals are becoming a punchline. The effort and hard work comes and goes. And they don’t score enough to cover up for all the turnovers they commit.

The storyline before the game was the goaltender’s duel and Markus Naslund facing his longtime former team for the first time. After the game, he was probably just embarrassed by this bumbling disaster.

Next game: Saturday afternoon at 3:00 in Ottawa.