Ranger Lothbrok

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.

LET'S GOOOOO!!!

All about the first goal IMO. Get one early and the floodgates open.

Great, Shmid. Now we get shutout on home ice and this no-name Patrick Roy's this series into 7 games. Can we PLEASE for once make a backup nobody look like a backup nobody?

I'm hopeful this is the difference Kane and Tank make. We've lacked that killer instinct before in the playoffs. This should be business as usual. No stupidity, no letting them in it, no north-south open ice BS. Shut down, take your chances when they come. They'll be amped up from a rabid crowd at MSG but first goal is REALLLLYY important. Can't get sloppy on the energy. I WANT to believe we can do this in 4 or 5, but after Tampa last year, and what we did to Carolina and Pittsburgh, I'm terrified of dropping 3 straight. Isn't that what happened in 1994 too? Won the first two, mailed it in for 3, the Guarantee, and then Matteau. Could've been easy, but it's the Rangers so it was double-OT game 7 agonizing.

God I love nothing more than shutting up the 40% of that arena. I was in high school when the Devils were dominant. I work in Paramus and in my time at this job I never saw a single Devils fan. All of a sudden this year the jerseys and t-shirts start showing up. Really didn't want to go into the office tomorrow if this series was evened up. Glad this was another convincing win. Outscoring them on their own ice 10-2 and confining Jack Hughes to 1 penalty shot has GOT to be in their heads now.

Deeply concerned about the prospect of a sweep. This is just not a good matchup for us. Kane has yet to look like he fits anywhere, and the fact that the lines are subject to change basically by the minute is problematic. Almost all season long this team has looked disjointed, haphazard, and sloppy. I do feel like the Devils are kind of where we were a few years ago with the Quinn teams: a lot of offensive punch but if they get shut down, game over. No capacity for forechecking or cycling whatsoever. But that said, this is a terrible matchup for a team that's been as sloppy as we have been. Panarin needs to be the best player on the ice and cut it out with the asinine turnovers on forced plays. If it ain't there, put it on net and see what happens. I'm hoping he was somewhat hurt last year because he was awful. If he lays another stinker, he'll officially have a reputation of disappearing when it matters most.

Yeah, aside from Motte, nothing we've done has fixed the team's biggest issues. My deepest fear is that this becomes a legendary addition to the "LOL Rags" reputation of trying to buy Cups and failing miserably.

I swear I'm not saying this to be contrarian, but I stand by my thought in the other thread. The team is a turnover-riddled defensive mess, and our likeliest first round opponent is the most opportunistic team in the league. Offense clamps down in the playoffs; scoring 6 goals to win is not sustainable. The return is mild enough that the trade is inoffensive, but I still don't get it. Reeks to me of "we'll do it because we can and why not?" I have a pit in my stomach that this is really gonna add to the embarrassment when we get swept by NJ because Trouba's a pylon, we're starting Mikkola, and every line is constantly committing egregious turnovers.

Okay, unpopular opinion here, but everything closes up in the playoffs. Mika and Bread were cooking earlier this month but have gone silent. Tarasenko hasn't added much. He primarily scores off the rush anyway, which is also shut down significantly in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Igor is off, we're continuing to give up 3-4 goals a game, and we're in the middle of a 3-game skid with some eminently winnable games (like last night) in there. We're also starting Mikkola. I know it's a lot of "well he decides where he goes and we can make it work cap wise so why the hell not" mentality primarily, but uh, serious question here: what need does Kane solve, exactly? Remember when we got manhandled by the Caps and spent a summer getting tougher, and now the only remnant of that is Goodrow? What happened to that? Where's the defense been? This kind of reeks to me of adding Jagr to a roster that had Bure, Kovalev, etc. without any real plan in place. I know Kravtsov wants out, but trading him for a 3 month rental (when we already dealt a 1st rounder for a 3 month rental who was, ostensibly, supposed to generate more offense) and potentially including a 2nd rounder and/or Zac Jones just seems like poor asset management. I guess the answer to my above question is puck possession solves a lot of problems and Kane's good at that? Gotta be honest, I don't really get it.

Am I the only one who feels like he singlehandedly changed the complexion of this team when he came back in the playoffs? I personally loved him and was heartbroken when we lost him. Really wanted to find a way to make the salary work at the time. Baller fourth line though now. We're all in, baby.

I just wish they hadn't led me to actually believe. Like, up 2-0 in the series and up 2-0 in Game 3 and I started to think: I wonder if Colorado is good enough to beat our team defense and if Igor could steal that series? Like, could this ACTUALLY be doable? But in classic Rangers fashion, nothing is ever easy. The way they played for the first 100 minutes of this series has been non-existent for the past 200 minutes. And I can't really fault them; they just look gassed. Like Tampa had more than a week off. We're hurting and exhausted. Lindgren leaves the bench at least once a game. Chytil and Strome were game time decisions. Igor is starting to cough up some softies. We're handling the puck like it's a grenade with the pin out of it. Get rid of it ASAP or it might explode. We're giving Vasilevskiy absolute gimmes and it's adding to his reputation, even though I feel like us playing our best would've swept these guys, and Carolina probably could've beaten them too. They're gaining this invincible reputation that, to be honest, doesn't feel earned in this series. It's more us not showing up than them dominating. I will say there's no shame in coming back from down 3-1 against Crosby (and down by 2 goals in Game 5, for that matter), and beating the team that knocked you out of the bubble in 2020, beat you in the race for the Metro, went up 2-0 in the series, then 3-2 in the series, and everyone picked them to win. Before it started, Carolina was -250 to win the series. They were picked to win by experts almost every game. Everyone says you need to lose to learn how to win, and it's possible that we just don't want it bad enough. But I don't want to accuse our players of that just yet; I really do think they're just wiped. We'll be back in future years with a healthy Blais, a more developed Schneider and Miller, and Lundkvist/Jones/Robertson on the backend as well. Othmann may make the team out of training camp, Cuylle and Korczak are exceeding their draft capital, etc. There's a lot to look forward to, and no shame in pushing the back to back Champs to 6 games after playing 7 games in the first two rounds, both comeback series wins, as the fourth youngest team in the league with a blueline that has an average age of 25.5 (that number drops to 23.6 if you take Braun out). But again, I just wish they didn't make me believe if they were going to go out with a whimper, making Tampa look way better than they actually have been playing.

Every playoff series, and every playoff run for that matter, comes down to one thing: attrition. And right now, we're losing that battle. Yes; Point is Tampa's most valuable playoff asset outside of Vasilevskiy, and I don't know if we'd be tied if they had him. Shit, I can't even say for certain that we'd still be playing right now after 4 games. But outside of that, they're just fine. Well rested, shaking off rust, and heating up. I don't know if we're gassed or whatever, but that aggressive, in your face forecheck we had is completely absent. We were forcing turnovers and pinning them for long stretches (remember "The Shift" by the Kid Line? Seems like a lifetime ago already, doesn't it?). Now everyone, Kreider included, is gaining center ice, dumping, and changing. No effort to press or take a lead. I'd call it turtling but that generally refers to sitting back when you have a lead. This is something different. Can't turtle if you never come out of the shell to begin with. They also have all kinds of time and space. What happened to teams entering our zone tentatively and with their heads up because Trouba might kill a guy if you don't? What happened to skating out to every man, fighting along the boards, cycling, etc.? We haven't played to win since the second period of Game 2. It's been about 150 minutes consecutively of playing not to lose instead of playing to win, and the funny thing about playing not to lose is that, generally, it results in losing. Without Strome, or Goodrow, or Chytil, all our deadline acquisitions are moot. The depth is gone with Rooney, Reaves and Hunt all playing consistent minutes. In this war of attrition, we're fraying at the edges. This is not me throwing in the towel, but if we're not healthy, this is a tall task. It's the tallest task possible, in fact. You're playing the back to back Champs. Have to beat the best to be the best. And we're so, so young. I'd like to say tonight will be another demonstration of this team's resilience, and that's what my heart so desperately wants, but my brain says the overwhelming likelihood is dropping four straight with a whimper. That said, Zubov the Bunny is coming out tonight and I will watch and root my balls off, the way I have all season and every game for decades now. LGR!!!!

I will say that, if that's the best we can come up with, it's a problem. BUT....we all know that's definitively NOT the best we can come up. Playing a late game Friday, presumably traveling in the wee hours of the morning, coming off a 7 game series against a team that had more than a week of rest, in basically a must-win game for them....and we STILL almost took it. That said, hopefully we can come up with a third W before Point returns, because he drastically improves their lineup. Moment I knew it was over: tie game with 5 minutes left, Kreider skates to a loose puck in the neutral zone right on Tampa's blueline. All playoffs long, he turns the jets on, blows around that defender, and drives to the net. He did a limp-wristed shovel deep into Tampa's zone and immediately went for a change. That's when I knew we weren't playing to win anymore. Also, something this team has done previously is rebound hard after shitty games (see Games 6 and 7 after Gallant said we looked tired in Game 5 against Carolina).

Much more passive this game. Makes me worried for the third period. This might be one we have to "survive" rather than win.

MAKE THAT 17 AND 1 FUCKHEADS

Let's GOOOO boys