So Bobby Sanguinetti has been shipped back to Hartford (AHL) today, making it seem very likely that Wade Redden will be ready to play in Buffalo on Saturday.
Although 21-year-old Sanguinetti was unimpressive yet solid in his two-game NHL debut, he does not affect what is the real problem with this team. Whether it’s Redden or Sanguinetti or Corey Potter or Mike Sauer (or any other youngster in Hartford) this Rangers team is still too easy to play against. It’s a simple sentiment, but it’s been abundantly true in the last month and a half.
And you know what’s a dead giveaway how easy it is to show up against the Rangers and play your game?
Last night, as Sam Rosen called the game on TV – a 5-2 loss the Penguins at home – he got overly excited about “great poke checks” by the Rangers defensemen. Now, no offense to Sam, who continues to do a great job, but really? Great poke check! What’s next, This Michal Rozsival poke check will last a lifetime!
This team, for all of their talent, is mediocre. And they will continue to be mediocre unless the mentality changes. They need to stop playing such nice-guy hockey and need to start aggravating their opponents.
One of the great things about hockey, and this has been passed down from generation to generation, is that the gradual annoyance of your opponent eventually shows up on the scoreboard. It’s how a stick to gut here, or a glove to the face there, in the end gives you that one tiny advantage that results in game-changing plays.
And that’s how the Rangers are losing right now: by small mistakes that result in game-changing plays.
It’s really nothing that big, nor is it a philosophical deficiency in the way John Tortorella wants to run this team. He wants them to “Go, go, go.” He wants them all to have “safe is death” tattooed on their hearts. But he also wants them to be defensively responsible. He wants them to control the puck. He wants them to be better down low. All of that can jive. It’s called a complete hockey team, and we haven’t seen one on Broadway in, oh, let’s see, 14 years, five months and 16 days.
Another thing Tortorella wants is this team to be tougher. That doesn’t mean that the guys on this team aren’t tough. They are. All the evidence you need is written in black and blue all across Dan Girardi’s body.
But, unlike his predecessor, Tortorella shows he wants to instill this rigidness by making tangible changes. That means putting Sean Avery on the first line with Marion Gaborik and Vinny Prospal, as he did last night.
As tough as Avery is, he can’t do it all. With that, there needs to be mention of Gaborik fighting his own battles as well. How many times have we seen this guy doing the shoving all by his lonesome? Last night, he takes a gratuitous hack at Mark Andre-Fleury with the puck in the air about an inch from Fleury’s chest. Sidney Crosby pushes him, Gaborik pushes back, then in steps Billy Guerin to give Gabby a nice face wash that was . . . you guessed it, not retaliated!
This guy is arguably the best pure goal scorer this franchise – franchise, established 1926 – has ever seen. Not to mention he’s injury prone. And there he is, in a swarm of opposing players harassing him, with no help. Who in their right mind would come into The Garden and not do that?
The face wash is one of the small things that gets under the skin of opposing players, and results in frustration. Frustration leads to mistakes, mistakes lead to goals, and goals lead to wins. The Rangers don’t instill any frustration, and are therefore voluntarily giving up that edge. It’s a shame.
But, as hockey is played between the whistles, it’s really not about the things after the play that matter. The lack of toughness isn’t about someone coming to shove Guerin to the ground fifteen seconds after the play ends. That’s merely a byproduct of the proper mentality.
The lack of grit is evident when a defensemen watches an opposing player on a beeline to Henrik Lundqvist’s chest, and decides to go for a stick check. Or it’s evident in battles in the corner, when the chosen method to win the battle is by lifting the stick and kicking the puck. Or it’s evident in Mike Rupp beating people to the puck in front of the net and getting two chances on goal before anyone even lays a finger on him. (Mike Rupp, hat trick. Really? Mike-freaking-Rupp!)
This is hockey, for goodness sake! Yes, getting the puck and controlling it is the point, but how you get the puck to where it’s supposed to be – behind the other team’s goalie – is not always by making a slick move with the stick. It’s like the need to go to the body in a heavyweight fight. It’s not going to get you style points, but eventually you’re going to wear down your opponent, he’ll get tired, make a mistake, and that’s when you put him away.
Now, that’s exactly what is happening to the Rangers. Tough teams are wearing them down and they’re cracking in the third period. Yes, they’re young, especially on the backline. But the mistakes being made are not aggressive mistakes. They’re not pushing the game, not pushing their opponents, and they’re letting the other team dictate the style of play.
One more note in this conversation has to be the presence of Donald Brashear. So he’s now on the second line, got 11:37 of ice time last night with Chris Drury and Ryan Callahan, and still refuses to play physical hockey, as it hardly seems he’s concerned with hockey at all. I think it was against the Panthers last Wednesday when he was against the sideboards and the puck came to his feet and he didn’t even acknowledge its existence. He was trying to pick a fight, for no other reason then to pick a fight. If he thinks his job on this team is strictly to pick fights, he’s wrong. He’s also there to play physical hockey, with some emphasis on hockey, as well. He needs to be ready to hit people who have the puck.
So all of this talk about the lack of an edge in the Rangers play is not about the ability of one guy on your team to be able to punch in the face of a guy on the other team. Nor is it about shoving a guy to the ground after the play because he just hit your star player.
It’s about being in the midst of play and playing hard, tough, and physical. It’s the Rangers’ game between the whistles that needs to be tougher, not before or after the puck is frozen. Dropping the gloves is a part of the game (which, in its current incarnation, has me thinking it shouldn’t be, but that’s for another time.) Brashear, if he’s going to continue to get this much ice time, can be a factor in making this team tougher to play against. All he needs to do is show he can bodycheck someone during the course of the game that will make a team not want to come across the middle of the ice with the puck again. Avery can do the same on the top line, by adding some grit and physicality and throwing off the opposing teams best forwards.
Until this team start to play nastier, until they learn how to be annoying and pesty and play like they sincerely don’t like you, they’re going to continue to be mediocre. Maybe there are just too many nice guys in this locker room. Almost everyone in there is affable and willing to converse and talk about the forecheck and systematic differences. They’re a smart group, a talented group, and, to a man, a tough group. But they don’t play with that edge that great teams do. Very few guys on the roster who get significant ice time play with a chip on their shoulder, and that’s a problem.
So yea, Gaborik is going to win you some games singlehandedly. So will Lundqvist. And no, odds are they won’t miss the playoffs because they’re too talented.
But to make an impact, Sam Rosen is going to have to see something on the ice that’s more exciting than poke checks.