RodrigueGabriel

There seems to have been a Johnny Cochran refresh this week.

Can they bring it when they need it?Definitely an identity game.

I feel like I just ate a load of bad Chinese food. I can forgive not quite having it on a given night. It's appearing not to care that I can't stomach. Hathaway should have left the ice missing a couple of limbs.

With 7 minutes to go, they have just given up. Unbelievable.

My feeling in January was that they had just seemed to have lost their nerve. Would be a bad time for that.

Just fucking godawful. They really want to back into the Playoffs. What a bunch of fucking turds.

Hathaway is due some settling up for his run at Igor last time around. That should be high on the to-do list.

Later on in the show, Vince explains in fairly simple terms why CSA evaluation is more likely to be accurate. To his telling, the public sites like NST and Evolving hockey assess the danger level of chances through an algorithm that is based on shot location. Vally's shop has people evaluating each chance through video analysis and, on that basis, are able to bring more situational nuance to what comes out the other end. I'm not the one to judge the differential impact, but it does appear to be a fundamentally different approach.

Valley just shit all over Wyshynsky's analysis on the VincePod, asking WTF he is talking about because NYR are 9th in the league in expected 5v5 goals, not 21st. So, for me, that's a pretty big discrepancy in the measurement of what is being used as THE definitive stat in the evaluation of a team's ability and potential. I come away thinking that advanced stats continue to be illustrative and useful at understanding some things, but require a lot of further development before we use them as the basis for sweeping pronouncements about the relative strength of teams - particularly in the Playoffs where will, emotion, cohesion, intimidation, momentum, and less quantifiable factors take on an oversized role. Valley also listed a set of qualities in which the Rangers excel - forechecking goals, face-off goals, rebound goals, goals off the rush, in addition to broadly strong defensive metrics - that describe a potent, opportunistic team that makes hay in areas that are not necessarily fleshed out in 5v5 expected goals. I think that his arguments lead me to the conclusion that if the Rangers happen to be successful, it might be due to factors other than luck.

The Gilbert jersey doesn't come out until a Game 7 - for obvious reasons.

You can't spell R-E-D-E-M-P-T-I-O-N without R-E-M-P-E.

My father's go-to phrase popped into my head: "a tie is like kissing your sister," which nobody wants. (Except, apparently, a large percentage of the porn consuming public.)

They were due for a stinker. At least they made it a game. Pack it up and forget about it.

Alright. Now climbing back in through the window.

Ok, now. Stepping back from the ledge.

Holy fuck. What a hot mess that was. Everyone fucking standing around watching.

This is a tone-setter for sure. Remind them they have no business being in the Playoffs.

I've just been hugely impressed and generally over-the-moon happy with how focused and no-bullshit the whole team has been so far. They're saying and doing all the right things and, frankly, it feels very un-Rangerlike to me. I'm basically terrified that any ripple in the hockey cosmos will throw them out of the balance that they've kept for the vast majority of the season. If expectations have been low all year, they're at the right level because the team has achieved the right result. Dom L at the Athletic pisses me off as much or more than anybody else and I have to go to the basement after I read his weekly power rankings to scream profane insults at the wall. (Like two weeks ago, they had the Rangers 7th?) While it genuinely pisses me off that he's wrong and his model blows donkey-dick, it has been part of the fabric all year - if not through the entire rebuild. Thus, it is a component of the general gestalt and overall groove that has gotten the team to this point and I don't want it to change. I do think there is an anti-Ranger bias around the league that stems from a team that has outsized fan representation in every arena that is hugely annoying to the home team, is always lauded for its "rich history" as an Original 6 team, and gets waaayy too much attention for having only won ONE STANLEY CUP in the nearly 60 years of the modern era of the NHL. I think among the broad hockey media there is a general feeling that Rangers have good and bad waves over time but they're really probably not going to win the Cup. Their record argues against investing a lot of predictive capital in them. Fuck 'em, because something special was afoot in '94 and proved that it could happen. I'm getting those vibes much more this time around than in '14. So, steady as she goes. This post does, however, remind me of my old girlfriend shrieking "don't tell me how to feel!"

My wife, who thinks I have the attention span of a puff of smoke in a tornado, got a good chuckle out of this.

Head down, focused, eyes on the prize. Doesn't matter what anyone else is saying.

I don't think Boston really applies as an example. Last year's Bruins cruised seemingly effortlessly all year and then couldn't function without Bergeron or with a diminished Bergeron. The end result was more akin to what the Rangers did last year, except that they GOT Kane and then fell apart. The Rangers haven't cruised effortlessly. They played through major injuries. They had a major slump and recovered. And perhaps most importantly, the failure against NJD last spring is still fresh enough to sting. If you think of these wins as somehow emptying the tank, I can see the worry. At least for these last 3, I don't feel like they have really had to exert that heavily. The system and the talent have delivered wins that are almost formulaic: hold them down as much as possible in the 1st and 2nd and then slit their throats in the 3rd. I don't want to see them let up in the name of conserving energy or success, I want them to play - and win - in the same controlled manner and continue to get better at it.

I know. But it's hard not to like the way they're playing from the perspective of getting to where Lav has said he wants to have them. The games vs NJD, DET, MON were just practice playing the right way. And the more it is ingrained as mental habit and muscle memory, the better off they'll be when it gets crazy. Lots of people have said that this team doesn't appear to have reached its potential and I agree, so I think of it as continued trending upward rather then a peak.

Still don't.

I don't think beating the number 15 team in the Conference (out of 16) represents a meaningful peak.

Taking care of business. Back to 3 on BOS.