The Rangers defeated the Hurricanes 5-1 on Friday. Ignore the final score, as it was a 2-1 game until late in the contest. But a pair of empty-net goals by the new king of the 6v5, Michael Grabner, gave New York breathing room and Paul Carey scored a very later power-play goal.
This win was thanks to Henrik Lundqvist. After surrendering a weak goal less than a minute in, Hank shut the door the rest of the way. Included within that strong performance was Lundqvist stopping a Jeff Skinner penalty shot. What made matters worse was that Jimmy Vesey was hit similarly earlier in the game and no penalty was called. The inconsistency of the officials rears it’s ugly head again.
I also would ignore the 2-for-7 mark on the power play. David Desharnais’ PPG was due to a Scott Darling misplay while Carey’s goal came when the game was out of hand. In between, the five other chances all had various levels of ugliness. Getting the man-advantage back up and running will be key as the schedule now turns harder. One piece of good news was the return of Ryan McDonagh from his mod ab strain. McD admitted before his return that the injury has bothered him for at least a month. His high pain threshold enabled him to play, unwisely as we saw, but the hope has to be that he is now fully good to go, as he looked back to his old self Friday.
Grabner is a topic I want to explore a bit more. A blog today (http://blueseatblogs.com/2017/12/03/rangers-trade-rick-nash-michael-grabner/) brought up the concept of dealing Grabner and/or Rick Nash before the trade deadline. We have discussed this previously but the continuous blogs etc on this is a bit unnerving. Can we let a bit more of the season play out before we decide New York has no chance and needs to punt.
Both players would bring back a decent amount in a deal. Grabner likely more so that Nash due to his salary and the likely better fit in more organizations. He can easily be moved up and down the lineup, due to his speed and ability to kill penalties. That speed allows Grabner not to cheat or leak out when the opponent has an empty net but to stay at home and rely on that speed and ability to read the play in order to score. While Grabner is not viewed as the offensive threat Nash is, he already has 13 goals, aided by the empty net markers, and is coming off a big campaign last year.
Nash does a lot of the dirty work that gets unnoticed or criticized because of inability to score like a player who is making $7.8 mil should. I get criticizing him for his failure to light the lamp. But I also believe that focusing on that one aspect, even though that’s why he brought in, also is very short sighted. I have made my opinion of dealing anyone at this time pretty clear in the past. Now, if Mika Zibanejad’s concussion is a long term or god forbid career ending injury, then maybe I would get changing my tune. But for now, that’s not the case.
Over the weekend, Filip Chytil suffered a scary injury. Chytil goes face first into the stanchion after a hit from Andreas Johnsson. See the gif here: http://twitter.com/JeffVeillette/status/937100685409226753
No word has come out as to how long Chytil might be out. But will no game until Dec. 8, the good news is he has a week to heal. In that game, Ryan Gropp scores twice and Vinny Lettieri added his ninth of the season.
Saturday, the Rangers practiced for the first time in I believe 30 years at Central Park’s Lasker Park. The practice was to help New York get ready to play outdoors at Citi Field on New Year’s Day. To say the event was a success is putting it mildly, it was resounding success. From Kevin Hayes, Brady Skjei and Vesey taking the 3 train in full uniform other than skates to the rink, to the thousands of fans that showed us for the practice and then the reminder of playing outdoors as kids to the team as a whole. Package all that together and it’s easy to understand why McDonagh mentioned that he wished the practice was an annual event even if New York wasn’t playing in an outdoor game.
The Rangers get back to practice Monday after an off-day Sunday. New York next plays two straight on the road, Dec. 5 at Pittsburgh and Dec. 8 at Washington. After the Dec. 8 game, the Rangers play the next day against New Jersey. Expect Ondrej Pavelec and his new Bruce Springsteen inspired mask to play one of the games Dec. 8-9, with my bet on the contest against the Devils.