Ranger Lothbrok

Yup. Turned it off.

Especially when a week and a half ago we were talking sweep.

I wanna say good season boys, but to not make it out of the first round is not a good ending.

Awful awful awful Adam Fox

Guys I think the bad team showed up.

Yeah I'm about ready to fire Panarin into the sun at this point. Drop passes are turnovers against this team. Stop doing it. Also, since when is Adam Fox allergic to shooting?

Igor keeping us alive.

Let's go boys. If it doesn't break our way, it's been an honor and a privilege.

I HATE these 8PM starts. Half of the time I consider "maybe I'll just go to bed and hopefully wake up to good news" and then end up staying up anyway out of nerves. Speaking of which, objectively this is just entertainment. I have no idea why I'm so nervous for a game I'm not playing in. Like, for me personally, what's at stake here? Some ribbing from Devils fans at work? And yet, you can make yourself sick over this stuff. Like every time I remember there's a game tonight I get a dagger in my gut of sheer nerves and wanna puke. Strange being a sports fan. You have a better than 90% chance of being disappointed every year no matter who you root for, and we all keep coming back for more.

The thing I keep going back to is: all three games we lost, we beat ourselves. It wasn't so much the Devils suddenly "figuring it out." Ruff made good adjustments, Gallant made none until elimination was on the line, and the biggest names on the team kept coming up short. You'd hope they would keep you in it when your team clearly doesn't "have it," but when Vincent Trocheck scores your only goal in a game, that's a problem. Panarin had TWO golden chances in the last 5 minutes of Game 3 to put it away, and we controlled the OT. If last year was any indication, awakened Mika = terror for opponents. Kreider has been Mr. Clutch for years now so we know what he'll bring. If we don't beat ourselves, I don't think they can beat us. It sucks that we have to be asking what team shows up tonight, but that's the life we've been forced to live this series. Play the way we know we can, Igor will take care of the rest.

I hope the good team shows up tomorrow. That'd be sweet.

Dat glove though. Seriously nobody gonna mention that?

I brought out the Rangers shot glass, the Foster's "oil cans" (as my dad and uncle used to call them during the 94 run...sadly they've both passed), and the Gretzky maple whiskey.

Keep pouring it on until they pull this piece of Schmid. I want Lindy guessing as to who to start next game. Sorry, it's the Rangers. *cough* IF there's a next game *cough*

Remember when we added Kane and people thought this was the most talented roster to ever play?

Agree 100%, but he's our darling new player that we brought in to win us a Cup. Surprised he's not on both PP units.

It's really pathetic. I was pretty against the Kane trade. Not as much as I railed against the MSL trade, but this one definitely fit under the banner of "doing it just because we can." Two years ago we became obsessed with getting tougher. Now for some reason we're back to deciding that throwing enough skill and money at the problem fixes everything. I always had the fear of the Kane thing leading up to an epic "LOL Rags" first round exit, which is precisely where this is headed. Just another exceptional embarrassment in a century of them. But beyond that general sense of impending doom that permeates being a fan of this team, I truly believe Kane sunk the season for us. We slumped when we could've been contending for the Metro title with roster hijinks to accommodate adding him. Now we're forcing him into situations he has no business being in. He turned a dynamic, puck moving powerplay into something static, predictable and overly cute. He's barely an AHL player. He's slow, passionless, and terrible on defense. And yet we keep trotting him out there. Couple that with Gallant getting flatly out-coached ever since Game 2 and it's a recipe for disaster. Mike Keenan had the balls to bench Brian Leetch. Gerard Gallant just keeps saying "I like our game."

The truly, truly disheartening thing is how apathetic they all are in the locker room after each of these games. "Yeah, I liked our game. Just get the next win." It's like they're going to bow out on Saturday after having a stranglehold on an eminently winnable series and then two weeks from now go, "huh....probably should've done something."

I hope they're very proud of those two pucks they filled in on their little Stanley Cup wall puzzle. Who's taking that lovely souvenir home?

Also my cousin (who is more of a casual fan) texted me during the last game to say: "Rangers coach looks like he got hit with a case of Labatts" and now I can't unsee it.

The sad thing is, with this "core" of players, this game is completely optional. It seems like it never becomes real until they're ACTUALLY facing elimination. By far the most likely scenario is a repeat of Games 3 and 4, and then hoping to get lucky in Games 6 or 7 (if it even gets that far). How many times have we said the effort is too little too late? Hell, they might not show up until they're actually down by a goal or two in an elimination game. I HATE that the "it's never easy because it's the Rangers" rhetoric is so true. Why was it so predictable that we would get shut down by a rookie goalie making his first playoff starts in a high pressure situation and that he would outplay our Vezina winner? We all made jokes about it beforehand and, sure enough, there it was. For once, just ONCE, can we PLEASE be pleasantly surprised? I know ostensibly inferior teams are giving powerhouses some difficulty (Panthers, Kraken, Islanders), so a sweep would've been out of the norm these playoffs, but it would be awesome if we could just show up. Like, not beat ourselves maybe. Anyway, I missed Games 1 and 2 for work events, so I will intentionally not be tuning in tonight. I will receive my updates pretty much exclusively from this board. Here's hoping I see way more "!!!" type posts than "fuck..." type posts!

I'm with Richie on this one. There's an unending bevy of superlatives and expletives I can throw out there in frustration, but it adds up to one word: inexcusable. How you blow out a team twice on their own ice and piss it away at home is unreal. Catastrophic, actually. A lot of people had this series pegged for 7 games, but now we're lucky if it gets that far. No heart. Gaudy regular season stats that end up in playoff disappearing acts across the board.

What....is....with....this....team

SOMEBODY CALM MY NERVES AND TELL ME EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE OKAY I'm feeling the offense clicking again. 5-2 Rangers. Put up 3 early-ish, NJ gets one and gets some hope, we put the dagger in with 2 more in the third, they get a garbage time goal.

Here's how I'm rationalizing: it took us going 0-5 on our previously-lethal power play, plus two near-misses by Panarin with 5 minutes left in the game, plus everything else they could throw at us, simply to get two goals instead of one. We outshot them by a wide margin, albeit not quality chances. I'm a little annoyed that the killer instinct still seems to be lacking. I was hoping Cup champs like Tarasenko and Kane would've fixed that. But, if that's the best the Devils have, we will still win this series. They barely got away with a win, whereas when we've won we've dominated.