The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

(I know, I know. Shut up.)

Derek Boogaard hadn’t scored a goal since January 7, 2006.

Four years, 10 months and three days later, he scored again, taking the puck coast to coast and rifling a slapshot past Michal Neuvirth to put the Rangers up 3-2 on the Capitals midway through the second period.

Since then, a new president got elected and already got halfway through his first term. There have been three Olympic Games. Conan O’Brien hosted three different late night talk shows. Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen played for the Flames twice. The Tampa Bay Lightning went through three owners, four coaches and four GMs. Twitter started existing, then became stupid. Some idiot gave Derek Boogaard four years at $1.625 million per. And so forth.

In scoring, he snapped a 235-game streak without a goal. The longest active streak in the league. And it came unassisted. None of the above was in any way a typo.

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Don’t forget about the prizes!!!

The Lead

For those of you unlucky enough to have actually sat through James Cameron’s epic “Avatar,” who then found yourselves additionally luckless to have suffered through tonight’s Ranger game, which was broadcast in 3D, you probably noticed some parallels.

When Avatar begins, there is a single blue speck floating apparently nearer to you than the screen. You can almost touch it. As the hero, whose name I forget, pulls himself from some sort of cryogenic sleep pod and out into the cabin of the ship, the full scope of the movie’s groundbreaking film-making is made apparent. You’re overcome with a definite sense of wonder at what you’re experiencing.

Likewise the first period of the Rangers/Islanders game. The Rangers came out flying, particularly and not surprisingly driven by the Gaborik line, pouring 15 shots on net, getting a little physical and generally outplaying the Islanders. They paid for every mistake they made. For most of the 20 minutes, it looked as though the visitors were standing still while Gaborik picked up a pair of first-period points, and it was 3-0 by the first intermission.

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The Lead

Tonight provides a wonderful example of the reason John Tortorella is perfect for the New York market.

After watching his Rangers, who seem intent to play with an ever-increasing lack of passion or skill or even basic competence and understanding of the game, get embarrassed by the sorta-crosstown rival Islanders, he kinda went off in the postgame presser.

He dropped f-bombs. He dropped s-bombs. He even used one of my favorite terms: “horsesh*t.” (Christ I feel like such a dink using that asterisk, but I have to feign respectability apparently.)

I will now intentionally violate my “Don’t use quotes in Good Night” policy because just wait until you read these kneeslappers.

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The Lead

John Tortorella must’ve been feelin’ strong. And why not?

The Rangers came into the game with one loss this season, that in their first game, and winners of seven in a row. So hey, the San Jose Sharks are coming to town, and while they did win the Presidents’ Trophy last year, they’re not exactly playing top-quality hockey.

So hey, let’s give one of the best goalies in the world the night off because this exciting new-look defense that hasn’t even allowed two goals a game can totally keep that up against a team with Devin Setoguchi, Danny Boyle, Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton and some fellow called Dany Heatley, even with Steve Valiquette between the pipes.

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The Lead

Tom Renney had to go, obviously. Glen Sather’s gotta cover his own ass for all those terrible free agent and personnel moves, so scapegoating Renney (who did himself no favors with his insane line-juggling) was bound to happen.

New theory: John Tortorella’s job isn’t to get the Rangers anywhere worth going this year, it’s keeping the ship on a straight course for the Port of Noplayoffs. Think about it. The Rangers are 10th in the league, but five points and a couple games in hand out of 18th. They’re a horribly incomplete team with loads of bad contracts and they’re going nowhere. Why bother to change that at this late juncture?

Glen Sather is not a stupid man (well…), and he may have learned from the lessons of the past.

A certain general manager of the Atlanta Thrashers once inexplicably saved his job, squeaking appallingly mediocre awful team into the playoffs by making a few trades that badly damaged his franchise’s future. The Thrashers, a mere two years later, are a few months away from back-to-back bottom-three finishes in the league. If Don Waddell still has a job come Draft day, it will either be through a miracle or indifference.

Sather does not want this to happen to him. So he now gets to have this team coast farther and father down in the standings until they crash out of the playoffs in a spectacular blaze of glory — maybe they squeeze out a few trades by the deadline, even! — and, at the end of the season, he can just throw his hands up and go, “F’n Renney, man. Ruined the goddamn team!”

That said, it looks like Tortorella’s off to a great start on Broadway with this 2-1 shootout loss.

Glen Sather, you’re a genius.

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The Lead

And with that, the staunchest of Blueshirt supporters officially began to abandon ship as well.

In reading a couple of message boards since the Rangers wrapped their ugly 3-0 loss to New Jersey, it’s become pretty evident that even the promise of Sean Avery’s triumphant return to Broadway will not be enough to stop the rivers and rivers of blood flowing from the vast number of holes in this Rangers team.

The bad news for this team: those holes are here to stay.

Scott Gomez’s $7.357 million cap hit will be on the books until 2014. Chris Drury’s $7.05 million hit will stay there until 2012. Markus Naslund’s ineffective ass will be weighing down the Rangers next year as well, to the tune of a $4 million cap hit.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Like Drury, Michal Roszival’s on the books until 2012, but at a more modest but somehow seemingly-worse $5 million a year. And Wade Redden, he of the 2-15-17 line and minus-11 in 53 games, including a minus-1 tonight, will cost the Rangers $6.5 million against the cap until 2014, when he will be 36 years old.

(A friend of mine that’s a lifelong Rangers fan sent me a text midway through the game. “Wade redden is the worst play in nhl history,” it read. “I cant imagine how he was once considered good.”

Yeah, it’s pretty tough to figure.)

Fun fact: The Rangers have $36.782 million committed to just six players on the roster (the above five plus Henrik Lundqvist) for next season, when the cap will go down and when they have to re-sign seven regular players that just happen to be restricted free agents this summer. Of the six signed players, only Gomez and Lundqvist are going to be under 30 next season.

In all, the Rangers have $40.159 million tied up in existing player salaries next year, with all those players to re-up, and the cap will almost certainly be going down.

Right, that’s good news.

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The Lead

I can’t believe they actually went through with it.

Obviously by now it is well-estabished that I consider the Adam Graves number retirement to be an hilarious, misguided travesty of the “proud” “tradition” of the New York Rangers. But watching the highlights of it tonight on NHL.com (like I could have stomached a full hour of that crap live), it kind of occured to me exactly what this all was.

1) A shameless money grab on the part of the New York Rangers.

The whole thing reeked of a “Hey guys, we know we’re not really all that good any more, but remember how awesome 1994 was?!” sentiment. Not that the Rangers don’t sell out every night, but this was a way to get disenfranchised fans back into the fold in a way that their boring, mediocre hockey team never could have. Some jerkoff from Queens might have heard about this and went to his buddy, “‘Ey Vinny you remembuh this Adam Graves guy? Yeeah, they’re retirin’ ‘is numba ova at the Garden,” and that’s all the Rangers were looking for. There’s a reason the franchise retired two numbers prior to Mike Richter’s, and six since: brazen, cheap opportunism.

2) A slap in the face to Andy Bathgate.

Bathgate was a guy who actually had a very good career and had his number retired by the Rangers earlier this year. He’s in the Hall of Fame, for chrissakes! And now he has to share a No. 9 banner with this, let’s face it, mediocre player. This is like if Patrick Roy had to share a banner with Ryan Walter (who, by the way, had more career points than Adam Graves) or if Steve Yzerman had to share one with Keith Primeau (who also has more career points than Adam Graves). It’s insane to think that this is being allowed to take place. Jesus, Todd Bertuzzi is only two points away from knocking Graves out of the NHL’s top 250 leading scorers, and they had the GALL to actually call him “One of the greatest Rangers in team history.”

3) A chance for the NHL to once again celebrate the 1994 Rangers as though they mean anything to anyone who isn’t a Ranger fan.

Yeah, it was a great team full of great players. So was the ‘89 Flames team but I don’t expect anyone outside of Calgary (and myself, of course) to give a rat’s ass about Hakan Loob (who also scored 50 goals in a season once, so face to you, Adam Graves). ‘Course the Flames wouldn’t have the unmitigated audacity to retire his number either, so there’s that. Meanwhile the NHL — and more specifically Gary Bettman, I’m sure — wants everyone to get geared up for next year’s Esa Tikanen Night.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of guys out there who are “great teammates” and “great in the community.” They don’t deserve to have their numbers retired. Craig Conroy is one of the best teammates in the league. So is Tim Thomas. Don’t think we’ll be seeing Connie or Timmy ever hoisting their numbers up into the rafters anywhere, and if they did everyone would rightly call it ridiculous.

I read a Rangers blog today that said Adam Graves should have his number retired because Clark Gillies is in the Hall of Fame, except that Gillies, of course, won FOUR Cups, not one, and had more points in fewer games than Graves. So there goes that argument. Can’t retire a number every time a journeyman has one great year, or the Orioles will have to put Brady Anderson up there next to Ripken.

Adam Graves sucked then and he sucks now. So do the Rangers, who fittingly lost their stupid game tonight. Good. That’s what Graves would’ve done.

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The Lead

It would appear, at the very least, as though the Rangers have this whole “beating the Penguins” gimmick figured out.

Apparently all you have to do is hold Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to an assist and five combined shots. Also, get in their face and hit them. This is a novel approach, but it seems to be working. With tonight’s 3-2 shootout win, it became the seventh time in as many games that New York defeated Pittsburgh at Madison Square Garden in as many tries.

Neither star was left alone all night, especially by Colton Orr, who did his best to shadow Crosby and, in doing so, even helped draw a double minor for both tripping and unsportsmanlike conduct from Brooks Orpik on a blatant and very comical play. After Orr followed Crosby up the ice and drew a couple shoves, Orpik hooked his stick blade inside Orr’s knee and pulled. Orr went down like he stepped on a banana peel in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but at least they got a four-minute power play out of it.

The only time in regulation that either Sid or Geno did anything of note to help the Penguins was when Crosby picked off a puck inside the Rangers zone on a breakout (and boy, “own-zone turnovers” must’ve been a common phrase around the New York dressing room tonight), carried it around the net and make a perfect backhand pass through the slot to a hard-charging Mark Eaton, who put the Pens up 1-0. Other than that, you didn’t see too much of Sid, who came into the night with something ridiculous like nine points in his last three games.

A lot of credit has to be given to the pairings of Marc Staal and Michal Roszival and Wade Redden and Dan Girardi, who were out there for the majority of shifts by Malkin and Crosby, respectively. It wasn’t too often that either Pens star was skating into the zone unpressured, and for the amount of bitching from Ranger fans about a few of the aforementioned defensemen, they played like All Stars tonight and helped the Rangers secure a win that, in watching the game, you saw they didn’t really deserve.

The Rangers trailed 2-0 after a Jordan Staal tip-in midway through the second, but Nik Zherdev answered with one of his own a minute and a half or so later to cut New York’s deficit in half. Petr Prucha, in his first game back from injury and after refusing to accept a rehab stint in Hartford, scored the game-tying goal with about five minutes to go in regulation on a crafty dummy play where he let a puck go by him to Gomez, who shot wide, and went to the net to bang in the puck as it came off the end boards. Not a bad little greasy goal for the kid in his first game back, and you could tell the Rangers were happy he got it. It was his first since Jan. 31.

Once the game went to OT, it was all Henrik Lundqvist, who made 29 saves, and the defense holding back the floodgates as the Penguins mounted a TON of pressure but only managed two shots. But once the Rangers got the game to a shootout, it was a fait accompli. Zherdev, Markus Naslund and Freddy Sjostrom all scored, and only Kris Letang was the only one that could answer for the Pens. Poor Dany Sabourin was helpless.

Really, it was a night where the Rangers did all the little things right (except, as I mentioned, for not turning the puck over in their own zone). They played Crosby more physically than I’m used to seeing, they kept a lot of shots to the perimeter and perhaps most importantly when you play a team with Crosby and Malkin on the same power play unit, they didn’t take a lot of penalties. Those two were only on the ice together for six shifts in the game, and three came in overtime. If you keep them separated, you at least have a chance to beat the Penguins.

It also didn’t hurt that the Rangers dominated at the dot. Literally almost every time you looked up, the Rangers were winning a draw away from the Penguins. Only one Pittsburgh player had a faceoff percentage of 50 percent or more, and that was Max Talbot, who won 2 of 3 draws. Mike Zigomanis was 2 for 6, Jordan Staal was 9 for 19, Rusty Fedotenko and Tyler Kennedy were both 0 for 1, Malkin was 1 for 6 and Crosby was 6 for 15. In the attacking zone, the Pens as a team were 3 for 14. In the neutral zone, they were 6 for 16. And in the defensive zone, they were 10 for 22. Grand total: New York outdrew the Pens 33-19. Scott Gomez was the ONLY Ranger who lost an own-zone faceoff as he went 1 for 4. That’s taking care of the puck to an unreal extent.

But despite that, there’s still not a lot to be convinced about with the Rangers. Christ, this was their seventh shootout win of the year. If they played in the Western Conference, where it’s actually hard to win games, things wouldn’t seem this rosy on Broadway.

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Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

I remember just a few weeks ago when everyone was talking about the New York Rangers being the team to beat in the East.

“Oh man,” fans of the Blueshirts were saying, “Look how good the Zherdev-Voros-Dubinski line is playing! Just wait until Naslund, Drury and Gomez come around! We’ll be UNSTOPPABLE then.”

But since the start of November, the Rangers are only 4-5-1 with two of those wins coming in shootouts? So what could have POSSIBLY happened to this top-three-in-the-league team to see them tank so badly?

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For years, everyone was passing Hugh Jessiman by. Eric Fehr, Shawn Belle, Tibor.

Well no more! The Rangers called up Jessiman, the only first-round pick in the 2003 entry draft to have never played an NHL game, earlier today. He’ll finally get his chance with the Blueshi… oh he got traded to Nashville. For future considerations. Ouch.

Jessiman, who is 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, has split the four seasons he’s been out of college between the AHL and ECHL and has 57 goals and 62 assists in those four seasons. He has no points in six games this year and has apparently been pushing his agent for a trade because the Rangers aren’t giving him a chance.

Memo to Mr. Jessiman: The reason the Rangers, who aren’t exactly lighting the world on fire offensively, aren’t giving you a chance to play in the NHL is because you are not good at hockey. You have had ONE (1) good season in your entire hockey career, that being the 24-23-47 freshman season at Dartmouth that got you drafted No. 12 overall in the best draft in hockey history, ahead of guys like Mike Richards, Ryan Getzlaf and Zach Parise. You are injury-prone at worst and a mediocre player at best. That’s why you’ve never played an NHL game, and likely never will. You’re an answer to a trivia question, not someone that’s earned a shot in the best hockey league in the world.

Give the KHL a whirl or something. Hockey on this continent is a dead end for you.

(Yes, I am still bitter about Jessiman scoring a hat trick against my college that freshman year, thanks for bringing it up.)