I don’t feel bad for Ovechkin one bit – he stuck his knee out like an idiot

Don’t believe me? Check out this pic I just screenshot:

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2156/ovechkinknee.png

THE SKY IS FALLING

Can we please go to back to the opening night lineup (Dubi and Redden aside for now)??

And leave it there for a few games?

Its really not like the shuffling is working.

Just put it back and leave it. See what happens.

Just cuz they don’t do anything for a few games….doesn’t mean we need to scrap the lines.

try to dump as much salary as possible: its time to rebuild fellas…trade if and ONLY if we can dump some dead weight (rozi, dreary, higgins, kots, redden even though hes been playing better) or if we can get a good draft pick/prospect back (even if this means dumping off a prospal or girardi at the deadline)…this seasons already done as far as im concerned\

…sadly i dont think anything i said above will happen; rather, good ol’ slats will be trying to salvage the season (which in his and daddy dolan’s mind is to make the playoffs and get some extra $$$$) at any cost…i wonder if staal, dubi, cally and co. are safe…i say not if it means a squeak in into the playoffs

drury sickens me…he has absolutely zero enthusiasm at all, in game or post game…i honestly think hes braindead…his bull, cookie cutter answers disgust me…if torts wants to light a possible fire under the team is to strip dru of the C…he never deserved to get it in the first place…what a bum…

time to bench. here we go.

drury kotalik and roszival

sangs can take rozis spot, and id like them to bring in chelios. seirously.

forget drury kotalik and voros and bring up byers and locke. here we go.

gaborik prospal avery dubinsky callahan higgins anisimov parenteau lisin boyle locke byers (these are our forwards)

staal girardi gilroy mdz sangs and redden
(thats our defense)

alas we can never admit mistakes and nothing will change because thats just what the rangers do. will trade for some veterans. and trade all our prospects and picks. get the 7th spot, and get knocked out in the 1st round. not a shocker really.

if torts reallly wants to put some fear into these players. bench drury. but no. bench lisin instead. not roszival or drury. but enver lisin. no wonder this team doesnt listen to him.

oh and i cant blame u for not writing a recap. i know i couldnt. this team sickens me

I’d rather have a season,even a losing one,with young rookie defensemen making mistakes and learning,then paying older guys with no future in our club to do the same.It may be hard to swallow all season,but these young d-men are our future,and they are EXTREMELY talented.I sure as hell hope sather doesnt go into panic mode and trade away all these guys,just to watch them flourish somewhere else,we’ve seen that before.
Patience,let em learn,our future is bright.

AHHA!!! I found out what rosi has…why he constantly blinks!!!…I have solved all our problems with my diagnosis!

Wow. Somehow a 7-1 start turns into that: a .500 record. This is disgusting. There was effort there tonight, at least, but it is still the lack of scoring and little defensive mistakes that are costing us games. The alarming thing is the fact that nothing is being done to change that.

Tortorella is trying to send messages by benching/scratching players but it is only adding to the problems this team faces. And now goaltending is suddenly becoming an issue with Hank looking shaky out there. This is bad, real bad.

only 15 points in 24 AHL games. I think he is scoreless in his last 5

1. Good first period.
2. Totally not surprised that we gave up the equalizer within the first shift of scoring. Didn’t expect that it would be just eleven seconds later… love Rosival’s decision to move out across center ice on Crosby. That’s the same decision that pulled him out of position and left Cindy in on essentially a breakaway. Sick of Rosival.
3. Mike Rupp scores 3 goals tonight. That in a nutshell should say something about where we are. Did anyone else see Joan Rivers on that red carpet that Rosival rolled out for him on his second goal.
4. The rest of the D played hard. I think they’re let down that this chump is making so much coin and should be riding the pine in the AHL. I say send him and Voros into the Thunderdome. Two men enter – one man leaves. See how that blinking douchbag handles that shit.
5. Gaborik is really good.
6. It’ll all turn around when Dubi comes back – you’ll see.
7. Rosival …. that’s right – SUCKS!
8. Torts should take a night off – see how the team responds to Sully
9. Bring up Ochocinco
10. Stop this losing crap

i hate this sutpid team.. nothing can ever just go right.

it really is time ot rebuild. we have a lot of good kids and we should trade our vets for picks.

look at the isles right now. their gonna make the playoffs at this rate and they have like 15 mil left in salary.

imagine the isles now with a few stars in the near future. scary.

oh yea, to get the souvenir cup that they serve my beer in.

1. My guess? Keep playing mediocre hockey.
2. Not much, the only players they have with trade value they don’t want to trade.
3. Both are to blame, but I am putting this more on Tortorella.
4. That’s a really good question, and its nice to see you ask it. Glad to see you’ve come around on what I’ve been telling you for a month.
5. Higgins is just snakebit right now, and maybe Callahan just isn’t the goal scorer we thought he was.
6. He is getting older, injuries and surgery have taken their toll, he wasn’t anything great to begin with, and he is a bad fit for this system, whatever system that may be.
7. Because they won’t admit mistakes on contracts and send down the necessary people to clear cap space to bring up Wolfies.
8. Chris Drury is a dead horse, I can’t spend another day beating him, I need my strength.
9. We were warned of this on Kotalik.
10. In fairness to Brashear, he played decently last night, but still has about as much business on the second line as my Aunt Ruthie.
11. The Power Play stopped working when everything else did.
12. No.
13. Yes, but only in between cigars. Yes, he thinks everything is fine.
14. As for this question, I am going to let the Rangers answer this for you. Here is why Jim Dolan doesn’t fire anyone or get involved in this team:

New York have sold out 169 consecutive regular season games, dating back to Nov. 5, 2005 against New Jersey; the last regular season non-sellout was Oct. 31, 2005 vs. Montreal (17,697); including the playoffs, the Rangers sellout streak is now at 183 games.

15. Because you are a loyal fan. That’s why we’re all here.

for those of you that were in the game thread last night, the dog crapping on my Ranger blanket was a telling sign

My greatest fear is that to save his job, Sather will trade any valuable player and deplete Hartford. Then he will finally get canned and we will be left in ruins for years to come.
There isn’t much left to say, there is no light at the end of the tunnel as long as Slats is still in charge. A new GM, a new coach would be a refreshing start. The fish sticks will win a cup before us, is that enough to make you really sick.

rosi is just horrible. he is always doing something to make him off position or he is on his ass. what a waste

The sky is falling…..the sky is falling…..

Good grief.

While there are plenty of problems (mostly the total invisibility of secondary scoring) with the offense – the problem with the current team, in terms of goals against and not winning games, is almost entirely on their own side of the red line.

While Rozsival has been the most prominent ‘victim’ – largely by virtue of his own ineptness – none of the other defensemen have been completely innocent or even ‘stand-outs’ in terms of their play. Each one has a good game/bad game and sometimes it even comes down to shifts. Their decision-making has been questionable at best, downright despicable at times. Until these issues have been addressed – through whatever means the organization comes up with – secondary scoring will be a secondary issue. Double the goal output in any of the last several losses, and they STILL lose the game – and when it comes down to wins and losses – they don’t ask HOW – just HOW MANY? Doesn’t matter if you lose by one or seven – it ends up in the loss column and you get NO points.

I highly doubt that John Tortorella expected these problems. He figured that he had a shutdown pair in Staal/Girardi, a serviceable group in Redden and Rozsival and plenty of upside with MDZ and Gilroy. Now what we see is a Staal and Girardi who are struggling; a Redden who’s been better than many expected but still, in my own personal opinion, sucks; a Rozsival who deserves nothing less than to be drawn-and-quartered; and Gilroy and Del Zotto who have been better than expected – but are still rookies and prone to mistakes.

Add on to that the fact that Lundqvist has not been playing to his expected level lately, and you’ve got a recipe for giving up 4 or more goals on any given night against ‘good’ or ‘elite’ teams.

Fix the defense – the rest will take care of itself.

There are plenty of people ‘hating’ on John Tortorella right now (or possibly for weeks). And while I can’t say I blame them, I adamantly disagree with them. The same for those who talk about “no leadership”/“locker room a mess” etc. etc. ad infinitum – like they have the foggiest clue of what’s going on behind closed doors. (Insert “rolling eyes” emoticon here)

Tortorella warned about the players’ ability to adapt to/understand the new system and have it become ‘instinctive’ early in during training camp and several times after that. He stated that it would take months – probably till the end of the year (calendar, i.e. 2009) – and that there would be rough spots along the way. Wow. Pretty insightful, don’t you think? Here we are at the beginning of December, and it looks exactly like what he said….

If you gave the organization a clean sheet – do you really think they’d have Redden/Rozsival? I’d guess “NOT”. And certainly not at the $$$ they’re currently at.

Ranger fans are mostly bi-polar – they want to make the playoffs, and go deep into them – but they don’t want boring hockey (aka “The Renney Years”).

The biggest mistake and dumbest move (dumber than the Redden contract!) the organization could make right now is firing Tortorella.