Rangers vs. Maple Leafs: A Goal Is a Point
Trust the process—even when it hurts. The Rangers’ latest loss to Toronto was full of good signs, bad luck, and one very overdue goal.
- I'm not sure what to really say at this point, aside from you really do need to trust the process. I know that's not what some of you guys want to hear. I know there's a "results over process" crowd that can make a lot of noise. But I was forged in the fires of the 2016-2020 New York Rangers who only seemed to care about results (process be damned) and that never resulted in anything of substance. On some level, you must accept that playing sustainable, winning hockey and not winning hockey games in a short-term window is not a reason to change anything. In fact, it's a major reason to keep doing the same thing.
- So the Rangers did it again Thursday night. They stretched the scoreless drought to 170 minutes (we still aren't done with these types of numbers at home yet), finally ended on a Juuso Parssinen goal of all things. That got the Rangers to overtime where a Mika Zibanejad mistake that would have sent me to the bottle last year led to a 3-on-1 that Auston Matthews tidied away for the win. That one hurts.
- The power play continues to be a struggle, although I'm still in the "this goal scoring drought is such a strange entity that I am actually not sure I can make any judgements off of it" mental state. I'm not sure how much longer I can make that excuse, but I'm making it right now.
- For the third game in a row, the Rangers saw a goaltender turn on god-mode. How much longer can that keep up?
