Blue Notes

the king quit on you.

long live the king!

It finally happened boys. The King did not stand on his head and look what happened. Anyone who doesn't think the Rangers need a gritty D does not really watch the games. I was there last night and the Canucks skated around like there was no opponent. I had a birds-eye view of Girardi watching 3 Canucks pass the puck around within 10 feet of the goal like he was in awe of them during one of the Canucks PP. 7 shorthanded goals allowed. SEVEN in 20 odd games? And that doesn't include the many more the King has stopped. Rosy, brutal with minus 11 in the last 13 and Kalinin minus 9 during the same stretch, according to Larry Brooks, and I believe it. Unless there is an occaissional crosscheck from a Ranger, the opponents go in front of the net without any fear. S. Zipay was correct in his headline that they left the King out to dry. Just deplorable. Not Monday morning quarterbacking because I said it at the time of the signings, signing both Redden and Rosy and taking up $11M per year in cap space has to be one of the dumbest ways to construct a cap era hockey team. Because of this, the Rangers really do not have many trading options. Prucha? Who would want him after being benched for all those games at $1.6M? Enjoy Duby and Zherdev while you can because one, if not both, will be cap casualties next year. Nice job Slats. The hope is that some team will take a shot at Prucha and/or Rosy figuring that if they're out of NY they will be better, but I doubt it, not at their salaries. As for answers? I think Slats has put the team in a corner with these salaries and the only trading chips he has are the players you wouldn't trade anyway (Gomez, Drury, Zherdev, Duby, Staal, Girardi, etc.). Maybe Duby will be dealt but what will you get back as fair value with him being a restricted free agent next year? 9 players signed for next year for $44M without Duby and Niki being one of the 9. Hopefully, there is a plan(?).

i can see dawes going.......possibly callahan too. i'd rather see dawes go out of the 2.

Yikes, bad game all around. Hopefully this is the wakeup call to the rest of the team that Hank is human and can't bail them out EVERY game. I agree Zip, he should have been pulled after the 4th goal. Good for him for taking himself out, screw these guys if they aren't going to play hard in front of him. Glad to see Vally bounce back after the Torranna debacle.

Bad game, move on and COME OUT FLYING AGAINST THE SENS.

Tony,

That's something I have been saying since the begin of the season but nobody wanted to listen. Most Rangers' fans have blinders on when it comes to the success early in the season and don't see there are many significant problems not only for this season, but for seasons to come as well. The only bright spot from last night was Valley's performance. If anyone (which I'm sure you all did) caught the last paragraph of Zip's game story today,

"Renney, who said he considered pulling Lundqvist after the third goal, didn't peel the paint off the locker-room walls afterward. "The message is on the scoreboard obviously ... You can go in there and rip them, throw things around ... Sometimes you have to illuminate the things we weren't good at: Where they are, where they think they are and help them deal with reality. That is more of what we did tonight."

This is one of the major problems this team has. You can praise Renney all you want for the job he's done during his time here but the Rangers need passion, they need fire, they need emotion and sometimes a team needs to be ripped, needs to be scolded they need to have those hell practices where a puck isn't used. I was never a huge fan of Jagr, but take away Jagr, and take away Henrik and the Rangers don't make the playoffs during the Renney tenure.

Tony

prucha and Kalinen among others are off the books after this yr. good chance Rozy will be allowed to go back to europe to escape his cap hit.

we won't win the cup until we fall to the bottom of the league and get a player like an AO type - young superstar and cost effective.

This is in reference to Arthur Staple's nonsense column that he probably had saved up for 2 weeks... just waiting to bust out when the Rangers finally had a bad game.

The idiotic comment that the Rangers have "won because a lot of the teams they play aren't very good" might be the dumbest thing I've read in Newsday all year. And that's a newspaper stakes its rep on being dumb!

Apparently Staple slept through wins against Boston, Pittsburgh, and Chicago -- three teams with "very good" records. Not to mention wins against Philly and Jersey when both teams had winning records (and still do).

And, of course, Staple virtually ignores the fact that the Rangers most dynamic offensive player got hurt in mid-October and has been out of the lineup. This is a different team when Gomez is 100%. Just wait.

The team should have been doing 'Herbies' after the game last night!

good points LI Joe. I forgot Kalinin was a one year and I hope you're right about Rosy. Another point about last night. If not for Valli it would have been worse. And I think as the season goes on you will see teams go after our team's weaknesses even more. You already see teams go after our pointmen on the power play to make them make plays. As a result, there are 7 shorthanded goals. It won't go away by itself. As far as Renney is concerned, I see the points about him but I think the team is seriously flawed from a personnel standpoint. All the coaching in the world cannot overcome that.

First off, Frank and Tony, you comments came long after mine..long after. I asked for a tough D man to support Hendrik and Valle....someone who's gonna protect our goaltenders and not take any crap.....never got it. Instead, they signed Rosy to 4 years at 20 mil and signed redden-to Capt. our PP...and that has been a total bust. Last nights game, w/Hendrik heading to the bench and taking himself out was the best wake up call the team has had this season. Now, it's time for everyone to take responsibility and do their jobs, every night, and every game. We need to come out of the gates w/such passion and desire, and not wait until we have our backs against the wall all the time. Successful teams have passion and desire for 60 minutes, and again, we just don't have that. Perhaps when Slats replaces Pern with a PP Specialst/coach, and we got our PP in the top 10 in the league, we'll stop the SHG against and start scoring with a man up. Until this happens folks, the season will just continue as it has. As far as the future goes, I don't have a clue what Sather has in his mind. But I can tell you this....most other teams if not all have similar problems, we're not alone, if that's any consolidation.\_ _

I agree Pucks. I only started to participate in this blog within the last month or so. I wanted Orpik in the worst way from the get-go. He was there for the taking. He's mean and physical. Yes, all the teams are "cap strapped" but I would really hate to see young players like Duby and Zherdev be the ones to go.

I just had a long post agreeing with PIP until it was deleted for some reason...

Basically what I said was, the Rangers haven't had a nasty defencemen since the likes of Beuke and Ulf were here. Struds, who a player that I wish was re-signed, was the closest we had to that in a long time, but wasn't nearly enough to fill the void.

The entire organization as a whole needs an overhaul, not just the coaches. Look at the Red Wings, there is a reason they are so good year in and year out. They always have a high draft pick, yet they address every aspect they need for their team. After the player is drafted, they are then taught within a system, a system that has worked for years. Look how much home-grown talent is on that roster. With the exception of a handfull, nearly every player on that roster was either drafted by, or has spent the bulk of their career on the Red Wings. It is teams that like this that overcome problems.

We didn't need two centers two summers ago and we didn't need two offensive defenceman this summer either. Sather never address' the needs of the team in the off season. He signs whatever big names are willing to come here and hopes no one will notice he didn't do his job. If the guys at the top made themselves and everyone below them accountable the Rangers would be the Red Wings. The only people made accountable for their performance so far have been Prucha, Dawes, Fritche and Rissmiller. Throw in Voros and Zherdev if you count a one period benching as accountability. It all starts with accountability. In hockey and life in general. A new GM and coaching staff are needed to complete the "Culture Change" this organization is supposedly embracing.

I wanted them to sign Shea Weber to an offer sheet last summer.......but I guess they wanted Redden...

How's that working out?