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Traverse City Tournament: Let The Panic Begin

Hello, panic, my old friend.

Joe Fortunato

Joe Fortunato

— 2 min read

It's a lot harder to give you guys quality analysis during this year's Traverse City Tournament than it has been in the past. Why? There's no streams so I've had to follow all the games via twitter.

That makes it really hard for me to give you guys something to sink your teeth into. However, the Baby Rangers have afforded me a storyline that I know I can write about. Not panicking!

Yes that's right, we're not even in training camp yet and there's already panic surrounding the Rangers. Thanks to one goal in two Traverse City Tournament games -- scored courtesy of Brad Morrison -- everyone is nervous. We've even seen some tweets about how the Baby Rangers have kept the same stride as the real Rangers after their disappointing performance in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final. (No I am not linking the tweet. Yes, your guess is right, he tweeted it.)

I feel like we go through this early panic every year, but this year's there are a ton of justifiable underlying factors to the Baby Rangers' struggles.

The first, is the Rangers don't have any of their European prospects on the roster. Pavel Buchnevich (the best player in the Rangers' prospect pool) isn't there, neither is Robin Kovacs, Alexis Saarela or Daniel Bernhardt. Sure, all but Buchnevich are prospects just picked in this year's draft, but they're still talented players who are missing from the lineup.

And not that this helps with the lack of offense, but top-goaltending prospect Brandon Halverson is injured and not playing in addition to Igor Shestyorkin being in the KHL right now.

Outside of this being a tournament that has no bearing on the NHL roster or players in any way; I still think it's safe to say the concern over the prospect pool is also overblown.

So let's all take a deep breath and relax. Trust me, there's going to be plenty of upcoming moments this year when everyone can have a little more justification to be angry/panic. But this? This isn't that moment.

To help calm you down, Buchnevich had a goal an an assist over the weekend. The goal was insanity. Go watch it for yourself.

There, now don't you feel better?

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