Saturday, October 10, 2009

Theeeeeyyy'rrre Baaaaacccck

Ok, so the hockey season is now 4 games old and you've been wondering what the heck has taken me so long to comment. Well personally speaking I might want to wait a half season before determining whether or not what we are seeing are the real Rangers or the pretend ones of season's past. To say that this team will go as Gaborik goes is an understatement. The Rangers have finally found a suitable replacement for Jaromir Jagr. How great might this team look if we had still had Jagr and Gaborik, instead making an ill advised pitstop in NJ looking for an Alaskan named Gomez. Will Drury still be dreary? Will Redden step up his game and show the rookies the right way to play? So far the answer on Redden is no, he ought to watch what Gilroy and Del Zotto are doing and emulate them. Its too bad that he just doesn't either have the legs or possibly desire to do so. Not sure what Rosival's situation is, but he's been very shaky. Could it be the Garden Boo Birds getting on him even before the season begins creating troubles. I don't really know, but I figure he'll get his head screwed on straight and will start making more of an offensive contribution and not be the defensive liability he appears to be. Regardless of how it appears right now, we aren't really going to know who this team is and how good they are until December or January. For those of you with really short term memories, the Rangers last season started 8-2 and were winning at a prodigious clip at the beginning of the season. Then the wheels fell off. The Garden faithful once again set their target on the wrong guy. Poor Tom Renney was given a team of misfits and expected to work a miracle. When you have a team with no scoring threat, you aren't going to win the big games. When teams realized that Drury and Gomez and Zherdev weren't going to be putting in the puck in the net, it allows them the freedom to shutdown the ancillary players like Dubinsky, Callaghan, Prucha and the rest. As it turned out, this lack of scoring forced Callaghan and Dubinsky to mature and take on a bigger burden for the upcoming year. Callaghan has star potential with a combination of grit, speed and scoring. His work on the penalty kill against Washington should be on every coach's reel for the junior players. Again, any coach given the right pieces is going to succeed. Give them dreck and even the best coach is only going to be average at best. So with a game tommorrow, lets hope the ship keeps rolling full steam ahead.

2 comments:

  1. Who knows if this is the real Rangers or not but at least the Rangers style of play is exciting again. At least they are watchable. *crosses fingers for the best*

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  2. Jody, lets hope that Gaborik doesn't get injured because he's driving this train. Everything feeds off him, like it used to with Jagr. At the game last night they had former Ranger greats tell the crowd which current Ranger reminds them of themselves. Rod Gilbert said Drury reminded him of himself. I told Rod why do you insult yourself like that.

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