Season Over

I want to be criticial, and I will, but first of all I want to acknowledge the way this team has fought this past three weeks. I’ve recently expressed a concern that the team had tuned Tortorella out and that they were ambling through to the end. Not so. This team showed character and a back bone that should bode well for those returning next year. What this team lacked in was depth and skill and a genuine physical presence throughout the blue line. These are things that Mr Sather has to be held accountable for.

Make no bones about it, The Flyers deserved to win as they shelled the Rangers all evening while their passing was crisper and forecheck keener. However The Rangers have Henrik Lundqvist and boy does that mean alot. I have no qualms declaring that we have the best goaltender in the world. Sather, PLEASE get him some more help on the back end and we can genuinely overachieve. No offense but Anders Eriksson is not the answer 

Now the critique. We allowed the Flyers too easy access to our zone all night, were (barring our ‘4th line’) too passive offensively and our key players – Henrik aside – were outplayed by the Flyers’ equivalents. You also can’t expect to win a game when you give up 45+ shots. I was also disappointed that we didn’t play as aggressively as Friday which is ironic seeing as this year we’ve been a better road team.

So now the season is over. The 10th overall pick in the draft is ours. I’d rather have had a top 5 pick and a chance at the big boys but we will get a good player in a deep class with the pick. Fingers crossed the lottery will move us a spot or two…

What needs addressing in the summer? Well, most Rangers fans know the answer to this. Ironically the way Roszival has played recently im ok if he stays IF they demote Redden, if not Rosi has to go (cap space!) and we need to bring in an ‘edge’ to the back end. Did you see how Pronger cleaned out Shelley ilegally? Well as ilegall as it was we dont have a player that threatens to smoke guys coming into our zone – Most successful teams have that kind of guy. We also need a top 6 center/scorer and we need to get a reliable back up (Auld can be that guy) for the King.

This team has alot of ‘building sites’ right now but a core is there so, with some right moves, things look good. We’ll go into detail about each and every area of need (and strengths) throughout the next few weeks, stay tuned.