A Weekend with the New York Rangers

The Rangers had a nice little weekend planned—beat the Devils as usual, go to Home Depot and look at some bathroom tile, take on Carolina, maybe wash the car.

But after a couple of ill-fated beer bongs on Friday night, they ended up streaking down Seventh Avenue ("Bring your green hat!") and letting in eight goals to New Jersey. On Saturday, they sobered up, put their sweater vests on and had a typical Rangers shootout win, 3-2, over the Hurricanes.

Friday’s game was an exaggeration of everything that’s been wrong with the team this season. The defensive zone coverage was an absolute disgrace, there were Devils players wide open all game and the Rangers were running around in their own zone like they were all hammered and had no idea what to do or where to be.

On Saturday, they tightened up, scored their obligatory two goals, while letting in their usual two goals. Henrik Lundqvist was back to his old self, making one great save after another, after being hung out to dry by his teammates on Friday. He was perfect in the shootout, stopping all five shots, and Chris Drury scored the winner (and the only goal by both teams in the glorified skills contest).

The power play against the Devils was about as bad as it gets. The Rangers were 0 for nine, and on top of that, let in two more shorthanded goals. It’s almost impossible to be as bad as they are. The number of shorties is just embarrassing at this point.

But against Carolina, they actually scored on their first power play (Markus Naslund) and even added a shorthanded one themselves (Blair Betts). So they do have it in them to be competent on special teams. The Rangers penalty killing is the only consistent aspect of the team, and it was seven for seven vs. the Hurricanes and killed off two-and-a-half minutes’ worth of five-on-threes.

Friday’s game was a wild, out of control goalfest by two of the lowest-scoring teams in the league. There were four fights and plenty of hitting and pushing and shoving. The Rangers battled back to tie the game but fell apart only 11 seconds after that, letting in three goals in the blink of an eye. Wade Redden was a minus-4.

And on Saturday, Michal Rozsival turned the puck over and the skated around in the defensive zone like it was amateur hour, which all led to Carolina’s first goal. Is there any way somebody can just drive Redden, Rozsival and Dmitri Kalinin out to the woods and leave them there?

The Rangers now head out to the West Coast for three games. You never know which Rangers team will show up, though. Will it be the one that comes up with nightmarish, humiliating losses? Or the one that pulls out low scoring victories with great goaltending? Nobody knows. I guess that’s the fun of it all.

Bag-O’-Knuckles-Meter

Colton Orr: 7

Aaron Voros: 6

Brandon Dubinsky: 3

Paul Mara: 3

Ryan Callahan: 2

Dan Girardi: 1

Petr Prucha: 1

Marc Staal: 1

Nikolai Zherdev: 1