As Marian Gaborik goes, so go the Rangers. The Rangers star winger was held without a point and the Blueshirts lost another game. New York is 9-2-1 when Gaborik gets his name on the scoresheet but have lost all four games where he was pointless or out of the lineup. After piling up seven straight wins, the Rangers have now lost seven of their last nine games.
It was actually a fairly good effort by the Rangers. They should have been winning coming into the third period but they couldn’t score on a four minute power play to end the second. Unfortunately, they hung Lundqvist out to dry and allowed the Canucks to score three goals (one empty netter) on twelve shots in the third. The Rangers only managed to take five shots in the final frame.
For me, there are two distinct issues the Rangers will have to deal with. Without secondary scoring, they’re very easy to gameplan against. Playing on the road means that opposing teams can match up their best defensive players with Gaborik’s line. As a result, the Rangers are a poor 3-4-1 away from MSG. The other area of concern is the blueline. Luckily, Michael Del Zotto and Matt Gilroy have proven to be extremely valuable. That’s good. But it masks the lack of development from Marc Staal and Dan Girardi. They haven’t been bad but they certainly haven’t lived up to their billing as the first pair. While Redden and Rozsival have actually been slightly better lately, they’re still playing like they should be the last men in the rotation. The two veterans’ time on ice against the Canucks (16:38, 15:17) seems to indicate Tortorella is finally coming to terms with that.
Below are my other notes from the game. For a different perspective, you can check out LoHud’s game notes as well.
- The Rangers “won” the second period with tenacious forechecking and excellent offensive zone puck possession. Other than that, they did little to deserve victory. They couldn’t generate many good scoring chances even with a ton of power play time.
- Vaclav Prospal continued his inspired play and looks bad ass with his black eye/cut.
- Artem Anisimov had a moment of brilliance coming through the neutral zone which and the rush nearly resulted in a Higgins goal. The kid shows flashes of immense skill and hockey awareness at times.
- Ales Kotalik continues to be a key trigger man for the Rangers. He seems to have a Brett Hull-like ability to find open spots on the ice and set himself up for one-time chances.
- Chris Drury continues to be absolutely invisible. His power play assist came when he received a pass near the hash marks, stick handled a few feet up the boards, before just dropping it to Dubinsky in the corner. Dubinsky did all of the work with an excellent centering pass.
- Toward the end of the game, Michal Rozsival took a garbage hooking call where it appeared that Henrik Sedin actually latched onto his stick before flopping. The Canucks put the game away with a power play goal and John Tortorella made his way over to Rozsival to give him an earful. However, it seemed like Rozsival didn’t want to hear what he had to say and his body language seemed somewhat defiant.
- Wade Redden was absolutely horrible coming out of his own end tonight. He turned the puck over to cause the first goal. Later in the game, he freaked out and threw the puck in front of the net to his defensive partner when facing pressure. On the same possession, he got it back and missed the breaking winger’s stick with an errant pass that went for icing.
- Michael Del Zotto is indeed the truth. The two plays that stood out to me were both in the first period. He made one 60 foot saucer pass that was perfectly weighted to drop on the recipient’s stick. The other play was very close to the beginning of the game when he had pressure heading up ice near the side of his own net. Instead of trying to force it, he spun around and softly dumped it behind the net so his defensive partner could pick it up. He could teach Redden a thing or two about that.
