Things could be worse: we could be the NYR!
Oct 26, 2002 9:34:47 GMT -5
Post by MPLABBE on Oct 26, 2002 9:34:47 GMT -5
www.nypost.com/sports/rangers/rangers.htm
Kings 6 - Rangers 2
October 26, 2002 -- It's games and homestands like this that get people fired.
Even in October.
Somehow, it seems worse than before. Somehow, the Rangers are less competitive now than they've been through the last half-decade of playoff misses. Somehow, the organization is in disarray, if not crisis, just nine games into a season that was supposed to be different.
Maybe it's the stunning sameness of it all that prompted Garden management to take down the huge "Hockey Is Different Here" banner that had hung from the Eighth Avenue mezzanine facade until last night. Maybe Garden management was prescient, given there was nothing at all different about the 6-2 whipping the Rangers absorbed from the Kings.
No one acquitted himself well last night; not the head coach, not the marquee names. No one has taken the lead in a season that's teetering on the brink of premature unnatural disaster. The Rangers are winless in their last five (0-3-2) after completing their four-game homestand with one point. It marks the first time in 10 seasons, second time in 53 years and only the fourth time in the franchise's 77-year history that the Rangers completed a homestand of at least four games with fewer than two points.
There's no chemistry; no discipline, either. After another night on which the Rangers were shorthanded an inordinate amount of times because of lazy, mindless infractions (three five-on-three's against!), they're now minus-16 in man-advantage differential, 30th in the 30-team league. For shame.
Eric Lindros is playing the way he did last January and February when he was returning from a series of injuries. Bobby Holik is doing as much to hurt the Rangers as he did as a Devil. Darius Kasparaitis, on for three more against, has been on for 20 of the 31 that have gone through the sieve-imitating pair of Mike Richter (pulled in the first after allowing three goals on 11 shots in 11:08) and Dan Blackburn. Brian Leetch is taking way too many foolish penalties. Pavel Bure may as well be in Florida.
And Bryan Trottier? Trottier, who apparently doesn't believe in matching, and who went into the game having dramatically changed his line combinations only to change them all again by the 14-minute mark of the first? What's the head coach's characterization of his team's state heading into tonight's match in Toronto?
"I'm a little bit lost for words on characterizing," Trottier, taunted by the crowd throughout, said. "You don't want to fool yourself. I think there just has to be a good, hard look in the mirror."
Holik, being utilized as a generic third-line center - and playing down to that assignment - had little of consequence to offer after the match.
"It doesn't happen often that I have nothing to say, but today is one of those days," No. 16, a co-conspirator on the game-winner against on Wednesday and responsible for the gaffe that led to the Kings' third goal last night, said. "Why? First of all, I am embarrassed by a performance like that."
Second of all, Holik probably doesn't want to issue statements that appear accusatory. He's new here.
"It's different and I have to deal with that," he said. "But this is not about me, it is about the team."
It's about a season already on the brink.
*
Radek Dvorak suffered a sprained left MCL during the second period and will be further evaluated tonight. It's not the knee on which he underwent major surgery, but the one he injured last November.
Kings 6 - Rangers 2
October 26, 2002 -- It's games and homestands like this that get people fired.
Even in October.
Somehow, it seems worse than before. Somehow, the Rangers are less competitive now than they've been through the last half-decade of playoff misses. Somehow, the organization is in disarray, if not crisis, just nine games into a season that was supposed to be different.
Maybe it's the stunning sameness of it all that prompted Garden management to take down the huge "Hockey Is Different Here" banner that had hung from the Eighth Avenue mezzanine facade until last night. Maybe Garden management was prescient, given there was nothing at all different about the 6-2 whipping the Rangers absorbed from the Kings.
No one acquitted himself well last night; not the head coach, not the marquee names. No one has taken the lead in a season that's teetering on the brink of premature unnatural disaster. The Rangers are winless in their last five (0-3-2) after completing their four-game homestand with one point. It marks the first time in 10 seasons, second time in 53 years and only the fourth time in the franchise's 77-year history that the Rangers completed a homestand of at least four games with fewer than two points.
There's no chemistry; no discipline, either. After another night on which the Rangers were shorthanded an inordinate amount of times because of lazy, mindless infractions (three five-on-three's against!), they're now minus-16 in man-advantage differential, 30th in the 30-team league. For shame.
Eric Lindros is playing the way he did last January and February when he was returning from a series of injuries. Bobby Holik is doing as much to hurt the Rangers as he did as a Devil. Darius Kasparaitis, on for three more against, has been on for 20 of the 31 that have gone through the sieve-imitating pair of Mike Richter (pulled in the first after allowing three goals on 11 shots in 11:08) and Dan Blackburn. Brian Leetch is taking way too many foolish penalties. Pavel Bure may as well be in Florida.
And Bryan Trottier? Trottier, who apparently doesn't believe in matching, and who went into the game having dramatically changed his line combinations only to change them all again by the 14-minute mark of the first? What's the head coach's characterization of his team's state heading into tonight's match in Toronto?
"I'm a little bit lost for words on characterizing," Trottier, taunted by the crowd throughout, said. "You don't want to fool yourself. I think there just has to be a good, hard look in the mirror."
Holik, being utilized as a generic third-line center - and playing down to that assignment - had little of consequence to offer after the match.
"It doesn't happen often that I have nothing to say, but today is one of those days," No. 16, a co-conspirator on the game-winner against on Wednesday and responsible for the gaffe that led to the Kings' third goal last night, said. "Why? First of all, I am embarrassed by a performance like that."
Second of all, Holik probably doesn't want to issue statements that appear accusatory. He's new here.
"It's different and I have to deal with that," he said. "But this is not about me, it is about the team."
It's about a season already on the brink.
*
Radek Dvorak suffered a sprained left MCL during the second period and will be further evaluated tonight. It's not the knee on which he underwent major surgery, but the one he injured last November.